44 Comments
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Maha's avatar

The perfect poetic commentary for how I feel on this particular day on this particular planet in this particular body.

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Saturn's avatar

Same here

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sol s⊙therland 🔸's avatar

May I add in that particular time too? 🙂

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Maha's avatar

Absolutely.

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India Flint's avatar

I remember sitting on the window bench at Caffe Trieste 15 years ago, and smiling to myself because Ferlinghetti and his friends were chatting over coffee at the round table across from me and it was all so beautifully surreal.

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LeeAnn Pickrell's avatar

How magical.

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Martin Mc Carthy's avatar

The world was certainly a more beautiful place when Lawrence Ferlinghetti and all the Beat poets were it it. It's not quite as beautiful at the moment, but at least we have their poems! Thank you, Poetic Outlaws, for this one!

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BB Borne's avatar

Love this. I think it was Yeats who said it more gravely (pun intended) - “In the midst of life we are in death.” Or is it the reverse?

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Sue Cauhape's avatar

Their world was even grayer than ours is now. Horoshima was still smoldering. But 20-20 hindsight always makes the past look rosier.

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Cathy Moffitt Boyd's avatar

This so reminds me of the importance of accepting "what is" if we truly wish to see the world as a beautiful place.

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Julie Dee's avatar

Encapsulates the paradox of living perfectly

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Sue Muncaster's avatar

loved the goosing stars and smiling mortician.

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Tom W.'s avatar

I really enjoyed this captured the bittersweet reality of life itself so well

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Sloan Bashinsky's avatar

Hee Haw

Before the smiling mortician and our hopeful heirs comes great industries whose very survival depends on us living as long and painfully as possible :-)

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Thomas Molitor's avatar

Ferlinghetti's spaghetti

of wordplay.

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Here To Listen's avatar

Thank you for sharing this powerful message

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Zalaine's avatar

You, me, each of us

I know the room in heaven he is talking about but there is one room that will play the music, all the time

The gratitude room, plan on being a frequent flyer and being in a place with no more waiting for that mortician 🚀

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Dust's avatar

As true to life now as it was when it was written.

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Jeannie's avatar

I choked up reading this out loud. I’d love to have heard him read this live.

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MisterChatterbox's avatar

Really fantastic! Love the wit of the final line in particular.

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Jenny Anderson's avatar

I came across this 30 years ago in high school, and it touched me so much that I copied it onto a piece of lined paper which I have saved to this day.. but I've never come across the poem again until now. I love that this showed up in my Substack today! 🙌

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