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1 " Psychoanalysis: An Elegy"What are you thinking?I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summerAs slow getting startedAs 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanzaAfter a lot of unusual rainCalifornia seems long in the summer.I would like to write a poem as long as CaliforniaAnd as slow as a summer.Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slowAs the very tip of summer.As slow as the summer seemsOn a hot day drinking beer outside RiversideOr standing in the middle of a white-hot roadBetween Bakersfield and HellWaiting for Santa Claus.What are you thinking now?I’m thinking that she is very much like California.When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. HighwaysTraveling up and down her skinLong empty highwaysWith the moon chasing jackrabbits across themOn hot summer nights.I am thinking that her body could be CaliforniaAnd I a rich Eastern touristLost somewhere between Hell and TexasLooking at a map of a long, wet, dancing CaliforniaThat I have never seen.Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady,Send them.One of each breast photographed lookingLike curious national monuments,One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highwayTwenty-seven miles from a night’s lodgingIn the world’s oldest hotel.What are you thinking?I am thinking of how many times this poemWill be repeated. How many summersWill torture CaliforniaUntil the damned maps burnUntil the mad cartographerFalls to the ground and possessesThe sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding.What are you thinking now?I am thinking that a poem could go on forever. "
― Jack Spicer , The Collected Books
2 " This ocean, humiliating in its disguisesTougher than anything.No one listens to poetry. The oceanDoes not mean to be listened to. A dropOr crash of water. It meansNothing.ItIs bread and butterPepper and salt. The deathThat young men hope for. AimlesslyIt pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. NoOne listens to poetry.— Jack Spicer, “This ocean, humiliating in its disguises,” The Collected Books of Jack Spicer. (Black Sparrow Books; First Edition edition July 1975) "
3 " This ocean, humiliating in its disguisesTougher than anything.No one listens to poetry. The oceanDoes not mean to be listened to. A dropOr crash of water. It meansNothing.ItIs bread and butterPepper and salt. The deathThat young men hope for. AimlesslyIt pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. NoOne listens to poetry.— Jack Spicer, "This ocean, humiliating in its disguises," The Collected Books of Jack Spicer. (Black Sparrow Books; First Edition edition July 1975) "
4 " This ocean, humiliating in its disguises"This ocean, humiliating in its disguisesTougher than anything.No one listens to poetry. The oceanDoes not mean to be listened to. A dropOr crash of water. It meansNothing.ItIs bread and butterPepper and salt. The deathThat young men hope for. AimlesslyIt pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. NoOne listens to poetry. "