When I Was A Boy I Was

Poets, Come Out Of Your Closets, Open Your Windows, Open Your Doors, You Have Been Holed Up Too Long In Your Closed Worlds... Poetry Should Transport The Public/to Higher Places/than Other Wheels Can Carry It.

Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace' One Grand Boulevard With Trees With One Grand Cafe In Sun With Strong Black Coffee In Very Small Cups. One Not Necessarily Very Beautiful Man Or Woman Who Loves You. One Fine Day.

I Certainly Was Surprised To Be Named Poet Laureate Of This Far-out City On The Left Side Of The World, And I Gratefully Accept, For As I Told The Mayor, "how Could I Refuse?" I'd Rather Be Poet Laureate Of San Francisco Than Anywhere Because This City Has Always Been A Poetic Center, A Frontier For Free Poetic Life, With Perhaps More Poets And More Poetry Readers Than Any City In The World.

Poetry Can Change The World, Just Like Any Art Can Change The World, By Changing Consciousness. Of Course This Was The Great Slogan Of The Nineteen Sixites Hippies’ Revolution—enlarge The Area Of Consciousness, Which Quite Often Was Done By Psychedelic Means.

Poetry Is The Shadow Cast By Our Streetlight Imaginations.