"What Am I Anyways"

By Paul Campanis

a poem. It all begins with a simple act.
It all is a simple act.
Divinity is daily.

When the boat leaves me on Nisiro back then in the seventies, I go into a
panic. I feel terror and deep fear. The unconscious dominated everything
there. In Rhodes I see the mercedes cars the Greeks own. I imagine their
cosy apartments, the food, the drapes, the tv, the megalia, the great stuff
they own. Greece is kind of a trip of the mind for me. From primitive
Nisiros then to the overdeveloped Rhodes then. All the same place but hard
to figure. Kevin at Bob's says my mind is in Greece and my body here. He
comes up to me that day at Bob's and says that with no hello or one of his
insults to me for which he is famous. Bob's is the discount store I hang at.
I can never concentrate on anything. My mind a jumble. I go forward
daily and forget the Greek burden, only not really.
Capitano. He is by the water, a lone and desolate figure, only he's not
lonely. Nisiro. The shore there. I saw this, did not imagine seeing him.
I think I talked to him and found him nice like all my Greeks. I mean he
had time to talk to me I think. I recall.
You pick up these human divines if you look carefully. I look carefully
as an artist and witness. Only I can never convince anyone that the thing I
say is of value. Kind of sad to have such a small impact on others but so
it is. Yes a human divine, tied to forces beyond us, plugged in, wired,
lasered to another place and another planet and way of being. Greek.
He lives out the life sentence. He knows his identity. It is not in
question. He does not go to the Right Guard deodorant to see who he is and
whether his arm pits have the right balm. He knows he is an "animan," a
human animal and was always thus. His divinity lies in accepting the animal
in him, the part that dies and he maximizes the man/woman part which
contains the soul and the spirit and will carry him to death and the next
chapter. And if there is no next chapter, so be it, is his reaction.
He is a witness of life and creation. It flows of him at the side of
the water that day in Nisiro. He stands silent, quiet, listening to
something or other. The artist, spare or large, oversees creation.
Any artist does that.
They are the conduits for juice.
They form the blueprint of the future.
They expose a shameful truth with a simple and constructive act.
We find the human is noble, good, resigned resolved, accepting,
mystical, together, real, courageous in the face of frailty, beached but
vital. He is traditional.
He is unaffected by commercials, soap, careers, cancer, anal creams,
Polo shirts, Colgate, NASA, networking, Toyotas, unemployment, employment.
In a call for you he says to take some action. "Forget the computer.
Get out your wheelbarrow."
Answer the longdistance call with the words, "Hello, world here!"
Then hang up and get back to work. Build the world around you without
government assistance.
I wrote all this stuff in 1992 when I got back from Greece. It is
rather nice it seems to me.


a poem. It all begins with a simple act.
It all is a simple act.
Divinity is daily.