Poets have long been confused for prophets and vice versa, but upon occasion, one runs across a poet who actually is the other as well.
Such was the case with Bean Newton.
In "Bean's Blank Page," the poet looks beyond the time of writing, probably shortly before his death in the fall of 1998, to a time just a few months distant, but a time one step closer to the Millennium, one step closer to the total societal collapse that Newton in other writings indicated would be confused by a populace become "fripperish and anile" for Armageddon.
The facts he may have gotten wrong, but the Zeitgeist he certainly didn't.
This poem is followed by a short piece, but one thematically linked, expressing Newton's deep anguish over the junk science and bad theory that still characterizes our media and our lives.
--E.W. Wilder, editor of the tentatively titled Bean Down So Goddamn Long, It Looks Like Lunch to Me: The Posthumous Works of Bean Newton.
Bean's Blank Page
I want joy like a river in my soul (in my soul).
I want to ride six white horses when she comes (when I come).
I want peanut butter & jelly, a mouth full of golden teeth, a jet
car--you know, what every good, red-blooded American boy wants, except
I want it all in hot pink.
I want to debunk the myth of Sisyphus, rejoin the class of castrati,
make a move on Simone de Bouvier. It's all about the unattainable.
Consider: white-ghost night-ride crossburnings is America also. Can't
we all just be Americans, self-hatred intact?
Freud falsified sex for us, opposite of/same as Victorian before. It's
all
we could do to maintain our chocolate trousers.
And corn-pone greebliness. I have a fetish,
but I won't say.
Then you must be a Communist
toodley-toodley doo.
I want Orangina and a silver four-post bed.
I want a freight train and a marble hat instead.
I want a miracle like the window on Waco street
where they saw the Virgin Mary in the street-lite
shine. What's a Virgin Mary worth in 1999?
I want a carnival and popcorn: the spasm
of the midway. Temperature and platform;
smell of funk and fear.
I want rainbow-colored ashcan and multi-floral rose.
Mechanistic outflow and a big red beeping nose.
Consider Hitler. No, consider Stalin ordering
millions of murders from within four walls. Beds
creaking with the relief of the lifted weight,
body shaking into the night lifted by other
bodies into a waiting Zil.
Makes me wanna eat.
She'll be riding six white horses.
Bean Fails to Communicate
Are you right-
brained or left-
brained? She
asks as if
I could answer.
It's junk
science, of course,
but aren't we all?
slapped together
on a sweat-slick
bed-top lab,
crucible tight
with collapsing
systems, constellations
bright as neurons.
I'm corpus
callosum, I say,
still believing
communication
between hemispheres
possible.