Friday Nights By Candle Light

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I'm holding off posting what is becoming a rather lengthy, but, hopefully, worthwhile piece on the brain because mine is currently overloaded. Lots to do at work, but great conversations with my oldest friend today and a good set of meetings and then more phone catch-up…in other words, as the poet writing on my shampoo bottle would say, Lather, Rinse, Repeat. And it was all of that with the best shampoo today, so I was happy to do it.

But the day will not end without a poem and a story. A few days ago I took my nice but slightly battered copy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “A Coney Island Of The Mind” off of my bookshelf and was reminded of one of the most rebellious things I did as a high schooler. A bunch of my friends from English class had read one too many poems assigned by Mrs. Kernutt, and we decided to create our own “Dead Poets’ Society.”

This group was supposed to be secret (sort of) and in our mission statement we said we would meet each Friday night at midnight on the footfall field of our high school, bringing a poem or poems by our own selves or at least one written by an author you wanted to read aloud. After the full disclosure and blessings from our parents, we were allowed to “sneak” away at midnight for an hour or so of poetry and the session always began with Justin reading "Burnt Norton", part I of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. We went each week rain or cold, mostly both rain and cold, (by week three tarps were being used), and at least one person would drive their car over so we could have the help of headlights to read by.

I’ll never forget the night I brought the gem I found sitting on my parent’s bookshelf, unread and unopened for a long while. It’s very thin and was probably forgotten when they had me, but I felt that something happened inside me when I read from this book to my society, the people who thought I was cool for bringing this battered copy of a beatnik poet into our damp circle. It’s fitting that the poem entitled “I Am Waiting,” was one of our favorites, but that I can still hear my voice reading it aloud makes me smile.

Reading this again, many years later is astonishing in that it reflects much of what we are experiencing today.  I still love his message and anthem here.  My mom was right, most everything circles and comes back into fashion, especially this poem. One of my favorite parts has always been Ferlinghetti’s reference to Yeats’ “Second Coming” and the stanza in which it appears. Rather than spoil it, please read it, it’s worth it. You too can then become a part of the old Dead Poets from Sheldon High School.

Just to throw this out there for conversation, I wonder how many additional votes Obama would have had if he had read parts of this poem...

I Am Waiting
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am seriously waiting
for Billy Graham and Elvis Presley
to exchange roles seriously
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
for Ole man River
to just stop rolling along
past the country club
and I am waitng 
for the deepest South
to just stop Reconstructuring itself
in its own image
and I am waiting for a sweet desegregated chariot
to swing low
and carry me back to Ole Virginie
and I am waiting
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I'm prepetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for Tom Swift to grow up
and I am waiting
for the American boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me

her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

What beauty.  My original copy of the book has a note prefacing this section which says that this poem, along with six other others were conceived specifically for jazz accompaniment and “as such should be considered as spontaneously spoken ‘oral messages’ rather than as continued experimental reading with jazz.”  And the book, when opened up, still smells damp and wonderful and full of promise of those Friday  nights.