I feel Glen Garry, Glen Ross; boiler room, suit and tie, sunglasses coffee and car-NPR. Leaving school behind for the summer, first day returned to corporate research database shill. Today, from nine to five, my only relationships were subform-to-table. It felt good to work on a project I know will be done by Friday, then on to the next job; suits my ADD and need for intense change (this being the only part of my life where Change Feels Good, Lay It On Me). School will look like heaven by September, but until then:

The inverted Square
- a problem in social geometry (for Ferlinghetti)

I have seen the smallest minds of my generation
assume the world ends at Ellis Island,
that its capitol is North Beach,
and Fillmore is a nighttown street
for weary intellectuals.

Man, there were no hypes at Stalingrad
and Malcom X is real!
Spare us the cavils of the nihilistic beats
who criticize the cavities and contours of their nest
but never leave it.
Warm in its filth,
maggots in a rotten apple,
with their little pen or paintbrush
they deride the filth they feed on,
they flutter but they never fly.

Little beat bearded Bohemian brother,
there are capitols in this universe
beyond your bagel shops and book stores.
Bandung was no chimera, nor Cairo--
you think we are so different from Egyptians?
or those in Tres Marias with Zapata?
Bird sang sweet, but sweeter is the song of La Habana
and its echo deep in Monroe County
swings, man, and you are not with it.
Man, like,
when you tire of pot
try thought.

-- Ray Durem