LOSING RELEVANCE BRINGS A COMMITMENT TO FREEDOM

You’ll never be Forrest Gump

   Talking to John Lennon on TV

     & you’re not the Dalai Lama

Not the President

   Or Louis Farrakhan.

And the computer is much

   Faster than your brain

     & the media’s so addictive

And your mother

   And your father

Left you for the Hereafter

   & one day you ask yourself

     What wusdin carries me––

Does it go back to Dante?

   Do you feel its electricity?

Is it a conspiracy?

   Is it all meant to be?

     Does your rage define

All the beauty

   That you’re surrendering?

And maybe your handwriting

   Isn’t anywhere on the wall

     But every poem you make

Is flawed like clowns

   Begging in a trance.

You just go on your never

   Each day losing relevance

     Till maybe you’re the only one

In your generation

   Who understood.

7 May 19953

Spoken word version from Walking thru Hell Gazing at Flowers.

Copyright © 1996 by Jim Cohn.

Text from The Dance Of Yellow Lightning Over The Ridge (Writers & Books Publications).

Copyright © 1998 by Jim Cohn.