write
I was feeling anxious today, so I went back and read your poem ‘Howl’. It never fails to make me feel less alone. Poetry is such a wonderful salve for a mind in pain.
I wanted you to know that sometimes I am so anxious that I can’t breathe and I sit paralysed with fear lest my actions cause pain. Pain, the pain we cause each other everyday weighs heavily on my mind. People tell me that it is through pain that we learn but sometimes I wish there was an easier way. I can though, on my better days, embrace the whole mess of it and express gratitude for my flawed, feeble existence.
Sometimes I wish I could be more like your friend and lover Neal,with his fearlessness and insatiable desire for life. It must be wonderful to be free from fear. To wake up and shout to the morning, ‘What will this new day bring?’
Your poem astounds me. The insight into the soul of a misunderstood generation who only longed for connection, for experience, for joy. A desire to give meaning back to a life deadened by capitalism and industry.
And your bravery in allowing everyone who reads it to be your confidant, knowing that there are those who will not want to hear and will say you are obscene and vulgar when they know in their hearts that we are all the same. That the desires that they believe are base are simmering in all of us.
Your words remind me that to be mad in the eyes of the world is the purest form of sanity. To scream ‘This is me! I will not have my soul debased by your ridiculous patriarchy.’
I want to be brave like you. I don’t want to lose my sensitivity and curiosity and simple desire to live a free and authentic life. Why shouldn’t I question the status quo? Instead of dreaming, why should I not live a life that makes me happy?
Everywhere I look we are trying to squeeze out any true beauty in the world and make it look or sound or feel the way we think it should. That such brilliance could shine out of the grey conformity surrounding you gives me such joy.
You are not afraid of the raw feelings wrapped up in our existence and you have put it down on a page. I can go back to it when the grim, grey everyday is too much.
People will never be alone as long as poets are among us. As long as we know someone has gone before.
Yours in admiration,
Bobby
