Initiation (To Live Poets Society) Poem by Diana van den Berg

This is like wow, man.
This is like real and now, man.
This is cool, man, really cool.

This is where the real and the crazy and the now are at.
This is home, brother, really home.

This is where a long-haired man
racked with pain or anti-inflammatories,
with cat-closed eyes,
twangs raw poetry out of his throat and his guitar -
poetry that rips open the gut, slashes the lungs and intoxicates the spirit;

where a lovelorn girl
makes music out of pain;

where cappuccino’s and philosophy
give painful birth to beauty’s child;

where children and aliens come to heel and hear not what,
where words and sounds and watermelons and motherhood and honesty and performance
and regret and Sunday nights and Monday afternoons and a telephone call
whirl faster and faster,
and twirl and swirl into a crazy kaleidoscope
of wild colours beyond colour.

This is where Life began.

(6 August 1998)