Notebook - Long Live Insanity

Notebook
I’ve been thinking about how the row of books on the far side of my work table looks like tall buildings in a city. From left to right the imposing edifices are: The Reader’s Encyclopedia; Gentleman, Scholars, and Scoundrels; A World of Great Stories; The Web and the Rock; Dry Guillotine; A Creed for the Third Millennium; The Sound of One Hand Clapping; My Brother Jack; Don Juan; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner & The Vision of Sir Launfal; 48 Saroyan Stories; Selected Poems of Robert Burns; The Oil Jar and Other Stories; The Naked and the Dead; and Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The edge of the table is the horizon. The dusty area in the foreground is an open plain, a fertile field. The dim area in the corner beyond is where the sun has recently set — or is about to rise: I haven’t quite decided. The spider webs are drifting clouds. The dead flies are — wait: there are no dead flies. Too bad. And I don’t know why, but the pale curtain descending represents the dawning of a new age. Why are there no mountains? Maybe they’ve been washed into the sea. The sea is my imagining. I see a man walking behind a heavy cart with wooden wheels. The cart is pulled by Leo Tolstoy, white-bearded, old, strong. Tolstoy has four legs and powerful horns. Honk! Out of the way! I see Walt Whitman. Walt is on his way to visit the president — the real president: Abraham Lincoln. But he arrives to find him dead. O Captain! My Captain! Horses, plows, villages, wells, barns: men and women tending ancient fires: children speaking the language of rocks and trees: layer upon layer, stone upon stone, wise rivers telling secrets to the soil. The looming buildings are full of books: they are all libraries: the commercial age is dead. Long live insanity, the bird is on the wing.	Also by William Michaelian POETRY Winter Poems ISBN: 978-0-9796599-0-4 52 pages. Paper. —————————— Another Song I Know ISBN: 978-0-9796599-1-1 80 pages. Paper. —————————— Cosmopsis Books San Francisco Signed copies available Main Page Author’s Note Background A Listening Thing Among the Living No Time to Cut My Hair One Hand Clapping Songs and Letters Collected Poems Early Short Stories Armenian Translations Cosmopsis Print Editions Interviews News and Reviews Highly Recommended Let’s Eat Favorite Books & Authors Useless Information Conversation Flippantly Answered Questions E-mail & Parting Thoughts
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