No longer risking anything, hardly that of death, upon performance at the feet of his
audience; the poet like a slave dancing entertainment on behalf of Massah’s tea. The
pressing American issue is not directly that of war, petrol, or the violence of adolescent
indifference but the camaraderie-like impulses that stabilize middle-class America. Trite
as it may sound to label the intent of American culture as in pressing need of reformation
above poverty, death, and freedom, it was at once the same culture of words that in our
country brought witness to our most dire, immortalized our loves, and declared our
freedom with one man’s pen.

It was not a choice of mine to ever even consider adorning myself with the label of
writer, poet, bard, or anything else which would cause anyone—upon the introduction of
my professional hobby—picture me alone in a basement apartment with no sheets on the
bed and a joint in my mouth, but it is so. I have denied so many times what has for so
long been so natural. For years I have wished for something more tangible; a sudden
interest in business, or even the harp—something marketable. Poetry, until recently has
never been an option for me. I enjoy school. I want to work for a living. I like sheets on
my bed. How could I ever be a poet?

While Cuyahoga Community College was beneficial to me in showing me the many
things I don’t want (and even exactly what I do want), it cannot give me what I want.
The standard required from students is less than what I have demanded from myself since
the age of fifteen. I am finished with this stage of inward contemplation; it is time to--
simply put--move on. What good is the contemplation of one’s life if one has not lived.
To live, one must learn. Upon my death I want to know that I released at least a breath of
life back into the asthmatic creature that has become poetry. In order to do so I must beat
myself another path. For I will not whine and rhyme my way into a book deal. Words
are my hallowed entity. I can only serve them properly with an education that is far more
than respectable.

It has come to be that the written word, as art, is dead, taken over by its self-expression
driven alter ego. The minds of Allen Ginsburg’s generation have spawned intellects
more of creatures not even given the chance to be destroyed by anything. The modern
poet, a renaissance fair jouster pretending to be of the times; the last time he was
hysterical and/or naked was upon leaving the birth canal. Poetry is dead America, my
blood; I refuse the flat-line to be permanent.