OR A Coney Island of the Mind if you’re Lawrence Ferlinghetti...which you may well be if you authored these poems.
4
In a surrealist year
of sandwichmen and sunbather
dead sunflowers and live telephones
house-broken politicos with party whipsperformed as usual
in the rings of their sawdust circuses
where tumblers and human cannonballs
filled the air like cries
when some cool clown
pressed and incredible mushroom button
and an inaudible Sunday bomb
fell down
catching the president at his Sunday prayers
on the 19th green
Or it was spring
of fur leaves and cobalt flowers
when cadillacs fell thru the trees like rain
drowning the meadows with madness
while out of every imitation cloud
dropped myriad wingless crowds
of nutless nagasaki survivors
And lost teacups
full of our ashes
floated by
9
See
it was like this when
we waltz into this place
a couple of Papish cats
is doing an Aztec two-step
And I says
Dad let’s cut
but then this dame
comes up behind me see
and says
You and me could really exist
Wow I says
Only the next day
she has really bad teeth
and really hates poetry
11
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind people dying
all the time
which isn’t half so bad
if it isn’t you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling the flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of summer
and just generally
‘living it up’
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind people dying
all the time
which isn’t half so bad
if it isn’t you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling the flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of summer
and just generally
‘living it up’
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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