Mock Confessional
Narrated by Bill Wolak
New Jersey
Mock Confessional
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Fish-sky at morning
and why should I
tell the world about it
It’s not the kind of news
makes headlines down here
Anyway I hear people are wondering about me
and I’ve written this to clear the air
especially since
people who read my books
don’t read other books
I’m sometimes known as the creator
of the immortal line
‘When I was a boy I was my father’
I generally feel like kissing someone
when I’m asleep
I don’t like sweet wine and cigarettes
police and bitchy women
Otherwise I’m amenable
To what goes down out her
I know I’ll never amount to anything
I don’t want to amount to
which is not say I’m without ambition
Sometimes I feel a fluttering in me
and I may sometime fly into the sun
wearing wax wings
I have a feeling I’m falling
on rare occasions
but most of the time I have my feet on the ground
I can’t help it if the ground itself is falling
I sometimes wonder what my totem animal is
In any case I’m not a crow or a grey fox
I may be somewhere between a centaur
and Sancho Panza’ ass
I know a good thing when I see it
and intend to survive
even if it means being a survivor
I have strange dreams sometimes
but they are not half as weird as
what I see walking down the street
I never did like people who walk like
They’re on their way to a party
When I’m at cocktail parties
I usually don’t say what I am thinking
which results in the usual drunkenness
I can’t help it if Catholic priests
won’t accept my confession
that I consider the Immaculate Conception
a cock-and-bull story
and always viewed the world as mons veneris
After all Father
there must have been plans
for more than two Comings
If this sounds like bright cocktail chatter
remember I’m drinking out of desperation
I believe in the Revolution
in its double-edged image
but maybe yours is not mine
I refuse to confess to the boys
or the ladies in the bathroom
What could they be up to
which I am not up to
Why don’t we all just dance and sing
and let the appendages hang out where they will
Let’s forge on to simpler things
The last time I saw Paris
was in the winter of 1967
when I had to sleep in a windowless room
in a street whose name I’d rather not remember
since I insisted in staying in the same hotel
I’d stayed in as a student a century ago
which now was made over into a mattress factory
Some days I just don’t know what to make of things
Other days I’m sure I have the solution to everything
the little key that will fit everything
and turn everything to my own alchemy
if not the wooden key that mayors give you
Well I’ll have to begin again
It seems my personal life is a complete
mystery even to myself
though I’m a raving success in the field
While I’m catching the high fly
a worm has succeeded in eating
a hole in my soul
When I reach down to mend it
I find a cocoon in my crotch
which becomes a butterfly as I watch
While I’m zipping up
it flits to my heart
And the world begins again
With a lurch it starts whirling once more
with its little supercargo of flesh
The race horses in their slots
take off again
but the big board registers Tilt
when someone like the government
jiggles the machine
and my key won’t fit my own door anymore
but there is still no sign I’m not an artistic triumph
I’ve proved that already with my fearless pen
though now it may run dry
and I have to dip it in some body fluid to continue
of which there are only two symbolic choices;
blood or water
The moving finger writes in both
and fumbles on
but leaves its indelible traces
only in one
which makes me wonder
if I really choose to me immortal
Excuse me for a moment
There’s another butterfly
lighted on my fly
and my metamorphosis
may not be done
though now I am’old’
and am my son