a v a n t g a r d e n i a s . c o m





	I. I am constantly overwhelmed by the weight of my own thoughts. In every waking hour since waking into life into waking into new life into waking into shifts of mind and paradigm into waking into death into waking into sovereignty of the immaculate and boundless human consciousness Into waking into life again I am overwhelmed. In idle silence and consummate joy I am overwhelmed. In San Francisco, Los Angeles, Mojave, San Diego and Woodland Hills I am overwhelmed. In parking lots under epileptic streetlights In psychotic frenzy of beauteous revelation In mystic rooms and wizards' chambers, walls lined with mossy forgotten runes In the unshakable understanding of truth and in the great inevitable doubt I am overwhelmed. I have laughed into the howling winds before I knew how angry they were inside. I have stared down the hollow eye socket hallways and down the barrel of threatening chance and seen light in a mirror at the end of the tunnel. I have stood at innumerable crossroads of infinite direction and stared in the face myself, the devil and unnamed deities. I have pulled the pin on spiritual hand grenades and listened to the echoes of my war drum chest cavity. I have drank myself into understanding, woken up the next morning and forgot the whole thing. I have tasted lust and love blindfolded and the results were inconclusive. I have taken up shelter within the burnt fuselage of the American Dream and nearly froze to death. I have known people as doors and mirrors and windows. I have spilled ink with the fervency of a million monks on speed, composing bullet train manuscripts by candlelight and driven mad by the sound of their chanting. I put my ear to the tracks of human progress and I'm still waiting to hear the delicate rumble turned furious roar of life being lived. I live off the burnt fumes of the land because my guts just can't handle that much lard. I am thinking too fast for paper. I am a dial set to an unreasonably large imaginary number. I am collecting evidence. I am an epiphany addict, so enamored, so reliant on the fire of change that I chase visions into the wilderness and across undiscovered skies until the next revelation shoots itself into my bloodstream. I am a witness to love thought myth and enlightenment thought hallucination. I am a witness to human degradation in aging playground faces that forgot how to remember. I am swimming a vast sea of orderly chaos, occasionally connecting with another set of freezing, flailing limbs as a generation obliviously attempts to drown itself. I am coping with the grim, meat hook reality that you are either swimming in the ocean, or you help constitute the ocean I am constantly overwhelmed by the weight of my own thoughts. Ask yourself if this is true. II. Now. What a furious and elegant thing is Now. Now is irreplaceable and it's creeping up your spine to seize your undivided attention. Now is a warm and comforting hand asserting its grip on your disproven sensibilities. Now is the time for walking the cold blind trail and Now is at your heels. Now is both a threat to your existence and the ultimate catalyst of life in capital letters. It's writing your poem faster than you can because it understands completely. It screams to be heard and is waiting for you to say it. Now is many things that are not discreet and it will strike you in the head. Now is the poem And the poem is holy. The poem is the bloody slug you grab with your thumb and index finger and yank right out of yer chest cavity and immediately throw against the page because it's the most important thing you'll ever write. The poem is a muzzle flash of unbridled self that only explodes off the firing pin when you live with the safety off.. The poem is a flaming, razor-sharp boomerang of destiny. It's one more cigarette crushed out into the ashtray ya carry around in yer chest. It's graffiti written on the fences of the devil's playground. The poem is a sledgehammer behind glass in the back of yer consciousness. The poem is the evidence of context which is otherwise immeasurable and it's flying through the ages, tearing its voice apart to resuscitate your own. The poem is the evidence and the poem is loud So why aren't you listening? Why aren't you listening to the evidence? It is absolutely everywhere and clear as day why aren't you listening to the evidence? Why aren't you listening to the deity you've crafted from your own holy brain? Why aren't you listening to silence? Why aren't you listening to the space in sound between traffic? Why aren't you listening to enough Tom Waits? Why aren't you listening to the muse she hates that so Ladies and gentlemen of the burning youth and lost bohemian jury, why aren't you listening? The evidence is everywhere, right in front of you and right behind you and right beside you and right outside and inside you but the problem with evidence is, it ain't the truth it only represents the truth and first it has to be found then collected and presented and understood you can be a t-shirt from the event but you cannot be the event itself. It's been around for centuries and it might be sitting in your uncle's attic so I hope ya don't mind a little dust between you and what's necessary because The poem is the evidence and the evidence is the poem and The poem will save your life. III. The beautiful people are alive and well in the world today. There's war and dissatisfaction, there's cigarette taxes and overdraft fees, there's nobody picking up their phone at 1:30 in the morning. There's never enough time or energy or reasons not to sleep. But we're doin' allright. We breathe life, we breathe hot smoke, we breath fire. We breathe fire, we speak fire, and we walk right through it on a daily basis. We resurrect Lazarus in parking lots. We part the fucking sea with guitars. We summon spirits in the mystic dunes and unlock the bonus level. We're an old man with a cane telling stories on a wooden porch. We wake up to a perpetual 1812 Overture and don't need a radio to hear it and we don't need sleep and we don't need slow and we don't need a break from it all. We know the value of heroes to those who have the hardest time finding them. The kind of people who will always make sure there's a circus to run away with. The kind of people your parents can't tell are the kind of people they'd warn you about. We're starving and alive. We're poor and thriving. We're fearless and we don't know it yet. Yes, the beautiful people are alive and well. and they've called us lost angels long enough. IV. REVOLUTION! REVOLUTION! REVOLUTION! Total revolution of your human spirit! REVOLUTION! REVOLUTION! REVOLUTION! Pick up the closest weapon you can find and take your revenge on fear. Find your vision quests of epic grandeur and make them. Make of yourself a conduit for holy poetic epiphany and don't fear the overwhelming awesome that's capable of coursing through you. Don't fear. Don't fear anything. Carry your words as weapons as the flying colors of your mind's nation and drive them into the heart of man. Take the way you know how to listen and render it sideways so you can hear the call to arms that sings at the frequency of a tree collapsing in the forest. Write your poems, sing your songs, paint your visions and talk to interesting strangers. Find the notes in the alternate tunings of your consciousness, go mad where you stand and record everything. Become terminally passionate to the point that it becomes you and you wear it on all of your clothes, on all of your skin. Bring the uncompromised entirety of the world you live in to fruition. Write vagabond poetry on cathedral walls and write holy verse on cocktail napkins. Play music EVERYWHERE. Always have a good attorney at your side. Seduce Amazon women. Have a threesome with freedom and circumstance. Make just the right things worse and just the right things better to the point where they all break together in perfect place, time and context. Be things of consequence! Be many things! Be amazing things! Be mad and inconceivable things! Be all the world has ever collectively decided is epic because isn't it about time?! Yes. Time to bring back poetry that brews behind aviator shades in LA's two o'clock furnace. It's time for heartbeats like illegal firearms. It's time to be the only ones left. It's time to quit your job. It's time to make the world stop turning and send it back into rotation with your own hand, calloused and ink-stained. It's time you heard that triumphant soundtrack again, the one that plays right behind yer ears that makes everything feel THAT damn important. It's time to acknowledge that in this day and age, ya just gotta learn that thing that those people know that those other people don't. the world isn't quite hospitable. the world isn't quite as strange as we could let it be. They've called us lost angels long enough.


all material on this site copyright 2008 by flip cassidy