I had arrived at the all too probably named Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute past its ostensible heyday. Founded in 1974 by Waldman and her “spiritual husband” Allen Ginsberg, the school had the reputation of a mountain retreat for the Beat Poets, and their friends in the New York School, and their friends in the Black Mountain school, and their friends in the New Narrative school.
one of them said / you girls are always hauling heavy stuff
it’s possible all women make up a secret organization working under the guise of an oppressed class
the women coerced into prostitution they’re the suicide bombers of our terrorist organization sacrificing themselves for the life of all women and the murder of all men a nice romantic image is coming together here I think I’m one of these women one of the ones engaged in the struggle against all men for all women
but I know it’s not true AIDS exists but the struggle doesn’t
Usually it tells you a lot about your day-to-day activities, / When, at such a moment of mass enthusiasm, you find it difficult to move, / And you cannot “calmly continue to go about business as usual.”