22
You sea! I resign myself to you also - I guess what you mean,
I behold from the beach your crooked fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me,
We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land,
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.

Sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths,
Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves,
Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,
I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases.

--Uncle Walt, from Song of Endlessly Going On About Myself. More Walt. Will it never cease? Next will be Kerouac and Ginsberg and then we'll be off on some sort of ecstatic American prose wanderjahr.

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

Dharma. The Sturm und Drang is worth it because my age and the state of my pockets makes it so. We are the young emulating the old, taking in Words of Advice from the likes of Burroughs and Bukowski at 78 even as we skim and forget their early fires still burning in cheap trade paperback and taught in high schools for heaven's sake. We who are adults at thirteen and adolescents for decades. What archaic language - "we" - is there ever any except to make it easier to think less about the remotely connected later? English-class shop talk.