Flying High

I was just walking along Bloor--just east of Ossington. There's a few bars where some real down-and-outers, booozers and addicts are always walking around, congregated in clumps on the sidewalks, talking, laughing, yelling. You know the type, drunk or high, dishevelled, downtrodden. At first, I thought, "Look at all these sad and unhappy people...all together in one crowd."

But then I looked to the other side of the road at the tired and worn out people coming out of the subway, briefcases in hand, eyes sullen and baggy, going home to their screaming and kicking kids, bills, mortgages, schlock on the set and a quick night's sleep before the cycle is repeated.

But the dregs, the drunks, the addicts--the perpetually stoned---live their lives in a state of beautiful blindness. Apart from a few hangovers, they lead a life of bliss, in a way. Maybe they know something we don't? Wouldn't it be nice to live our lives in a false happiness, an altered state of reality, instead of real and fatigued sadness?

Food for thought. So, readers: Go have a drink, or two, or three, a snort, a hit--and we can all find out? Meet you on Bloor...I'll be the one talking to myself.

The King of May

Kraj Majales (King of May)

by Allen Ginsberg

And the Communists have nothing to offer but fat cheeks and eyeglasses and
lying policemen
and the Capitalists proffer Napalm and money in green suitcases to the
Naked,
and the Communists create heavy industry but the heart is also heavy
and the beautiful engineers are all dead, the secret technicians conspire for
their own glamour
in the Future, in the Future, but now drink vodka and lament the
Security
Forces,
and the Capitalists drink gin and whiskey on airplanes but let Indian brown
millions starve
and when Communist and Capitalist assholes tangle the Just man is arrested
or robbed or has his head cut off,
but not like Kabir, and the cigarette cough of the Just man above the clouds
in the bright sunshine is a salute to the health of the blue sky.
For I was arrested thrice in Prague, once for singing drunk on Narodni
street,
once knocked down on the midnight pavement by a mustached agent who
screamed out BOUZERANT,
once for losing my notebooks of unusual sex politics dream opinions,
and I was sent from Havana by planes by detectives in green uniform,
and I was sent from Prague by plane by detectives in Czechoslovakian
business suits,
Cardplayers out of Cezanne, the two strange dolls that entered Joseph K's
room at morn
also entered mine and ate at my table, and examined my scribbles,
and followed me night and morn from the houses of the lovers to the cafes of
Centrum -
And I am the King of May, which is the power of sexual youth,
and I am the King of May, which is long hair of Adam and Beard of my
own body
and I am the King of May, which is Kraj Majales in the Czechoslovakian
tongue,
and I am the King of May, which is old Human poesy, and 100,000 people
chose my name,
and I am the King of May, and in a few minutes I will land at London
Airport,
and I am the King of May, naturally, for I am of Slavic parentage and a
Buddhist Jew
who whorships the Sacred Heart of Christ the blue body of Krishna the
straight back of Ram
the beads of Chango the Nigerian singing Shiva Shiva in a manner which
I have invented,
and the King of May is a middleeuropean honor, mine in the XX century
despite space ships and the Time Machine, because I have heard the voice of Blake
in a vision
and repeat that voice. And I am the King of May that sleeps with teenagers
laughing.
And I am the King of May, that I may be expelled from my Kingdom with
Honor, as of old,
To show the difference between Caesar's Kingdom and the Kingdom of the
May of Man -
and I am the King of May because I touched my finger to my forehead
saluting
a luminous heavy girl trembling hands who said "one moment Mr. Ginsberg"
before a fat young Plainclothesman stepped between our bodies - I was
going to England -
and I am the King of May, in a giant jetplane touching Albion's airfield
trembling in fear
as the plane roars to a landing on the gray concrete, shakes & expels air,
and rolls slowly to a stop under the clouds with part of blue heaven still
visible.
And tho' I am the King of May, the Marxists have beat me upon the street,
kept me up all night in Police Station, followed me thru Springtime
Prague, detained me in secret and deported me from our kingdom by
airplane.
This I have written this poem on a jet seat in mid Heaven.