Fragment From A Public Secret

By: Bob Kaufman

Rebels, what are rebels, here in the land of rebellion, this land that began with rebellion—are they those whose activities can objectively be absorbed or assimilated into pattering time, remember, it is not important, for in the end, the rebel is TIMELESS, and it is only in the passage of time that we can discern the rebel from the dissenter.

America, who are your rebels, what shores have they been cast upon?

Is it because you have discovered a use for everything that they have found their only recourse is to seek among nothing, hoping to find components which, in the finalities of construction, might assume the postures of principles, and discovering the horror of frustration, turn to death as the fount of the creative act?

From there to where?

Where do seekers go—seekers who have no German philosopher to lead them through the halls of doom, whose whitelike walls are invisible to the naked eye?

Seekers of the truth have always waked eyes, and always will, and in time shall be naked in their own light.

Here is a rebel, one large, monstrous rebel, who first tears down himself, and sneaks like fireworks into the paths of others, hoping to explode, often showered, existent to the end.

Every time I open my big mouth
I put my soul in it.
It takes so much to be nothing,
to shroud the mind's eye
from the gaudy theater
of the head.
Fallness noon of the mind
cluttered with discarded fantasies
nerve paneled corridors of imagination
opening on hidden universe
glimpsed in the echo
of a scream. 

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You can find this poem in Bob Kaufman’s remarkable little book— The Ancient Rain: Poems 1956-1978. You can also check out The Jazz Poetry of Bob Kaufman published on this page.

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