Addendum V: Recipe for Happiness

Today is Poetry Day here in Ireland. One of the initiatives run by Poetry Ireland this year is 'Pocket Poems' - where you can download and distribute little pocket-sized poems as keepsakes.

Since I don't happen to agree much with any of their choices, I'm doing my own series of Pocket Poems and you can find them over on my main blog today: A Blog of One's Own, one of which is this short, simple and straight arrow burst of joy from Lawrence Ferlinghetti. 

Recipe for Happiness - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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.

Day 540: Constantly Risking Absurdity

What better poem to typify a Saturday than a Beats one?  Lawrence Ferlinghetti - the man who published Ginsberg's 'Howl' was also a poet in his own right. He even earned the term Poet Laureate of San Francisco. Here he is, in the characteristic Beat manner of exhilarating blank verse expressionism, on writing:

Constantly Risking Absurdity - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charley  chaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence