Back in 1973, when it still seemed safe to do so, I picked up four hitchhikers near San Francisco. They were dressed hippy style except for one. He was in his late twenties and had dropped out from a marriage and a high pressure job in financial services.  He never gave his name, but was a great admirer of William Blake* and Bob Dylan. So I am calling him "William Blake Dylan."  We shared a heartfelt conversation, and when he and his friends got out of the car he handed me six small sheets of paper. Written at the top was "poems written around Easter 1972" and, in small printed letters, were several poems and fragments of poems.  I have reproduced about half of them below, with slight editing.

William's poems reveal a painful awareness that his mother can no longer help him. Friendships are transient, drugs are double edged, he is tossed about between "heaven hell" in a strange and obscure life. It was not easy to "turn on, tune in, and drop out" in 1972.  Perhaps if my friend for an hour is still interested in William Blake he will discover this page and we can talk again. I still have his gift, and I never forgot.
     Daniel W. VanArsdale, 9/4/2000

[Untitled]
after finding out personally the common nonsense b. dylan put forth many years ago that nothing makes sense - there is only sorrow and only tears - there are no problems

and after experiencing the horror of horrors that mother child reunion and security of such is impossible, the strongest purest female's love i now lost

i can no longer cling or be clung to for my own self love, it must remain ethereal and abstract and so do i

[Untitled]
suicidal this day
droppin' acid the next
chess champion
pawn

[Untitled]
the return to normality continues to haunt
the strangest lifetime i've been seen in

[Untitled]
always ending having to begin
always angels fighting off sin
always losing trying to win

[Untitled]
the womb gate has opened
    and closed
so i trip along tossing in heaven hell
    a coin
trying to devise a system

[Untitled]
the babe awakes amidst turmoil earthquakes
innocence and wisdom has another brief interlude
to flourish as a flower
to die on the sly

[Untitled song lyrics - part]
. . .
others trying to make their mark
become a light in the dark,
when we're all blades of grass
in the same park

             FRIENDS
friends, after gathering for the winter
in springtime fly away, their way
i sit at the last party
and look at their faces
wondering how much alike we are
and seeing only vast differences
myriad inferences
manifold connections of comical cosmic net
i see them and myself as part of
everyone we've known
everything we've seen
every touch, smell, thought, sight, touch, sound
we've ever perceived
i see us in union for some short time joined to eternity
i see us in separateness, alone, never knowing ourselves

[Untitled]
thinking back to friends and lovers of my universal movie
parts played with no awards
love given with no glory
pain felt with silence
thinking forward about scenes unknown

[Untitled]
friends and lovers and memories
all that i hold dear
as fleeting as shadows of the falling afternoon sun
i am so old
i was so young

* William Blake, 1757 - 1827, English poet, engraver and painter.

email: Daniel W. VanArsdale 

Index page for Daniel W. VanArsdale