Caitlin Johnstone

Surf

In vulnerable states, like when a bird meets my gaze or after a good knife fight, I will sometimes admit to being a materialist, with the small caveat that I don’t know what material is. I know what time it is, but only when it’s the same time as the broken clock in my forehead.…

Caitlin Johnstone
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In vulnerable states,
like when a bird meets my gaze
or after a good knife fight,
I will sometimes admit to being a materialist,
with the small caveat
that I don’t know what material is.

I know what time it is,
but only when it’s the same time
as the broken clock in my forehead.

I like poems because prose is like a stranger
who grabs your tits and says “Hey wanna fuck?”
A little more subtlety if you please, good sir.
Can you not see that you are speaking to a lady?
Can you not see the crown on my head?
It is made of newspapers and stuffed bats with glass eyes
and the smell of fresh lawn clippings
and late nights rife with bad decisions.
A little decorum, if you please.

You want to know what I believe?
Fine. Here is what I believe:
I believe that life is like surfing,
except instead of a wave
you get a cluster of cells wrapped around a skeleton,
and instead of a surfboard
you get a jumble of hallucinating neurons,
and instead of a surfer
you get an empty broom closet
surrounded by an infinite expanse
of fractal empty broom closets
and the sound of babies laughing
from source unknown.

I move through life like a horny caterpillar
eating everything it sees and belching rose syrup,
then I open my face and pour words onto screens
and thousands of people tell me thousands of stories
about what kind of prophet I am
and what kind of god I must worship.
I can never understand what they’re saying,
but their lips, teeth and tongues are bedazzling.

I take my crown and my tinsel wire wand
and go surfing this hallucination’s armageddon.
I never know where I am going,
but I know it’s exhilarating,
and I know that there’s treasure
behind every eyelid.

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10 responses to “Surf”

  1. M Jury Avatar
    M Jury

    Nicely done! This is one of your best!

  2. Louis Gatto Avatar
    Louis Gatto

    Surf:

    I have been “surfing” the internet since 1997 and have come across a lot of good “stuff”… I know Good Stuff when I read it.

    …Thank you Caitlin, your words are filled with wisdom and hope…

    Louis

  3. wapiti Avatar
    wapiti

    You, woman, are fucking crazy. Love ya sister…..

  4. Johan Koeslag Avatar
    Johan Koeslag

    Tears behind my eyelids and my clock has broken…

    Awesome!

  5. Orlando J. Valerino Avatar
    Orlando J. Valerino

    “I like poems because prose is like a stranger
    who grabs your tits and says “Hey wanna fuck?”
    A little more subtlety if you please, good sir.
    Can you not see that you are speaking to a lady?
    Can you not see the crown on my head?
    It is made of newspapers and stuffed bats with glass eyes
    and the smell of fresh lawn clippings
    and late nights rife with bad decisions.
    A little decorum, if you please.”

    Very Bukowski and very good, Johnstone.

  6. Ozzie Maland Avatar
    Ozzie Maland

    What is a pretty poet’s syndrome?
    (Her gift from x’s chromosome)
    We think that something better
    Does spark her every letter—
    The wits to make her words hit home!

  7. Charles Fitzsimmons Avatar
    Charles Fitzsimmons

    I must say I’m very attracted the the Baha’i worldview, as conveyed by a friend of mine. When an older man, a stranger, asked him one day, “Can you tell me what is going on in the world?” My friend answered, “Well, it’s like an egg. If you leave it for a while and then open it up, it’s all confusion inside. But if you leave it a while longer, you get a chicken.”
    What Caitlin and so many of us who read her writings seem to perceive clearly is that the Universe has fertilized humanity collectively with a new organizing principle that is transforming human consciousness and will lead to the birth of something entirely new, if we don’t in the meantime poison ourselves or atomize the planet.
    Presently the world is in a great mess; anarchy is approaching its climax. The one thing that we all have in common is our suffering. But there are stirrings of life that carry the promise of making everything new. This renewal has to start with our consciousness, but spiritual qualities and ideas are contagious. Therefore there is hope.

    1. Gary Clevenger Avatar
      Gary Clevenger

      Hope is the spring of new life, a wondrous thing of balance in natures fling… As above, so below we wait and toil in the hope of renewal… the spirit is calling to all that will here, that still small voice and the gong in the wilderness of chaos… on this little sphere!

  8. Gary Clevenger Avatar
    Gary Clevenger

    Refreshing………..

    Exhilarating commentary, not an ordinary psychonaut deviant, question everything and take no prisoners kind of mind set… More or less a wisdom beyond the tales of ordinary conditioning, from birth to death not a single original thought. Yet, here we see and hear the sounding gong in the wilderness of lies, the death of conformity and the essence of normalcy. Programing undone and the surfing under the sun, another entity in the cosmos, a special planet of life, revolving in an orbit all it’s own. Where knowledge and creativity finds a mean and a meaning of planetudes the spherical life of the creators experimental experience. It’s almost like creating life in a void of strife and illusion… the illusion of all that is confusion and the transfusion we all need in the experiential, not A-typical status quo!

  9. Charles Fitzsimmons Avatar
    Charles Fitzsimmons

    This is so sweet and funny, Caitlin. You are my wise younger sister, be it in poetry or prose. I love the way you think and feel. Please don’t stop.

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