Poetry for Ginsberg – Nicholas Foreman

Illustration by Aarushi Periwal
Illustration by Aarushi Periwal

Poetry, I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.

Poetry, you’re a kid’s game, its time to grow up.

I can’t stand my own mind.

Poetry when will you lace my pockets with gold?
Instead of vacuous scribbled notes.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
When will you open doors?
When will you heal the sick?

When will you reveal yourself to disenchanted youths?
When will you realise you don’t exist anymore?
Poetry why have you introduced me to the dead?
It’s hard to make friends when they’re not breathing.

People look at me like I’m crazy.

Why have you usurped the ephemeral joys of my youth?

I should’ve gotten laid and started fights.

I’m only earnest when I’m with you.
Poetry why did you uncork the wine?

I haven’t stopped drinking.

You told me losing my mind was good for poetry.

I turned my room into a crack den ashtray wine cellar

Under a lake of half finished poems.

A diet of green tea red wine and bleak poetry.

I’m tired of collating I should be collecting.

Poetry you belong in the mountains with Chinese Zen lunatics

I have a heart condition, I cannot climb.

You once opened my mind to the ways of the east:

Make no formed conceptions about the realness of existence nor about the unrealness of existence.

Asian ideals are wasted here in the west

I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.

 

Poetry, I can’t keep thinking in rhyme and couplets

Its time to do something, go somewhere

To which I’ll retire in smile ambiguity.

Poetry when will you resurrect the music business?

Why did you promise me a coterie of intellects?

There are too many Cons in poetry; I want to be a Pro.

 

Poetry kill television

Poetry liberate the dumb

Poetry stop chatting and get back to work

Poetry I once played sport and had friends with more muscles than words and every time I grew my hair or got a piercing I was criticised until I started taking drugs and I was free you have no idea.

When will you become fashionable?

Has television killed you?

Poetry I don’t subscribe.

 

You could once influence a generation,

Have you died on the vine?

Together we were going to ornament this world

With knowledge and kindness,

but I’m not going to paint my freedom with a whore.

It’s time you reciprocated.

Poetry is my game of heart

Poetry I’ll break it just to make it work.

Nicholas Foreman,26, is from Melbourne, Australia. He started writing and reading poetry at  the age of eighteen after discovering the band “The Doors”. He is currently studying Arts at the University and hopes to become a Social Worker.

 

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