How to be a Poet

(Here, preserved for you as though in amber, a bit of psychedelic nostalgia if no more, a street broadside from 1967 San Francisco.) 

How to be a Poet 

Still your mind a moment -- let the sludge run off. 

Unplug the robot wires that feed the ego cash pump whine. 

Banish the mass media sounds and sights, those hustler demons lower than us at our worst. 

Look around. 

Open your senses one after another; 

   then take a breath 

      and just before exhaling 

         see how they all dance together. 

Think of the modern building you most despise 

   and what it's like: 

      your old uncle frightening with face-creases 

         red and moist at bottom, 

         or a mad monkey, 

         or a vain immortal slug, 

         the breeze from hospital antiseptic. 

Or the building you most love and what it's like: 

   fingers on soft flesh, 

      clouds of good memory, 

         ants relating secret lore, 

         a spicy wind in winter -- 

Think of when you've been highest and lowest 

and what the colors of the planets smelled like then. 

Tell about a street corner familiar as an office-mate, 

a tree distinct from all the rest, 

a squirrel about whom you imply in twenty words a century's career. 

Know that your soul is holy and perfect 

    and base and mortal and easily hurt 

        and there the plot gets thick. 

Know that your sisters and brothers 

beat with the same heart pounding 

    to catch up with itself 

        and you may look to their eyes for the proof. 

 MAKE LOVE TO THE LOVELY WELCOMING YOU!