If You're So Smart, Why Ain't You Rich?

I need everything else Anything else Desperately But I have nothing Shall have nothing but this Immediate, inescapable and invaluable No one can afford THIS Being made here and now (Seattle, Washington 17 May, 1955) MARIGOLDS Concise (wooden) Orange. Behind them, the garage door Pink (Paint sold under a fatuous name: "Old Rose" which brings a war to mind) And the mind slides over the fence again Orange against pink and green Uncontrollable! Returned of its own accord It can explain nothing Give no account What good? What worth? Dying! You have less than a second To live To try to explain: Say that light in particular wave-lengths or bundles wobbling at a given speed Produces the experience Orange against pink Better than a sirloin steak? A screen by Korin? The effect of this, taken internally The effect of beauty on the mind There is no equivalent, least of all These objects Which ought to manifest A surface disorientation, pitting Or striae Admitting some plausible interpretation But the cost Can't be expressed in numbers dodging between a vagrancy rap and the newest electrical brain-curette Eating what the rich are bullied into giving Or the poor willingly share Depriving themselves More expensive than ambergris Although the stink isn't as loud. (A few Wise men have said, "Produced the same way . . . Vomited out by sick whales.") Valuable for the same qualities Staying-power and penetration I've squandered every crying dime.