Walt Whitman

Was watching this DVD the other day: L.I.E. (long island expressway)

about this 15 yr old boy whose mum died and dad is getting arrested by the F.B.I. and he's getting gay vibes from his best friend and is robbing houses with him but one of the owners catches him n who turns out to be this extremely cultured ex-spy who is also gay and likes to have young boys. (!!!)

all in all, kinda screwed up. And I'm not sure if the title L.I.E. is trying to say anything but I don't think any of it is a lie. In fact, it's a pretty honest film. I guess the expressway just played a major role in the movie.

but there's some nice poetry in there, cos this 15 yr old likes poetry and writes some too. Once, in the car with the ex-spy, he quotes this excerpt frm Walt Whitman:

Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul,)
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, now I have heard you,
Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake,
And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.

O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,
O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you,
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night,
By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous'd, the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.

Walt Whitman wrote this about a pivotal experience in his life, that of watching a mockingbird singing futilely for its mate (who had disappeared, probably died). And this episode apparently further pushed him along the path to becoming a poet.

I checked out other stuff by Whitman, but they're all 'oh glory to america' kinda things. all about how wonderful the US states/ farmers toiling/ wheat/ liberty etc are. *grin*. it's interesting. He even writes this:


Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you,
that you be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,

I have loved many women and men, but I love
none better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb,

I should have made my way straight to you long ago,

I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;

None have understood you, but I understand you,

None have done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,

None but have found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,

None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you,

I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, god, beyond what waits intrin- sically in yourself.

*grin*.... first time I've seen a love poem to a poem....