Song of Presley Conkle

America is going through another great change. The tide of war is rolling in to wash this nation away. Immigration, education and the cost of waiving our right to walk down the road are the pins that pierce the soft tissue that is our brains. Under the leadership of a fool prince, and a merry band of thievish magpies, we the citizens of America suffer. As we struggle to find solutions while our oily fingers only point outward. A better country is achievable. Committee discussions and protests are not the answer. We must first look inside, a simple idea with monumental possibilities. Who are we?
I sat and asked myself several questions recently. When I first meet someone I try to ask as many questions as possible in order to learn about the person to whom I am talking. What do they enjoy? What do they fear? What is there favorite color? How do they feel about this or that? And when I get my answers, they turn the questions around on me. My predetermined answers usually fall out of my mouth and the night is considered successful. When I was asking questions of my self I made it a point to answer each question that I asked, honestly. My findings astounded me. I don’t know this man whose body I have occupied for twenty eight years. My honest answers didn’t match up with the answers I had given hundreds of times previous. After reading Song of Myself, I understood why there may always be a stranger in my skull.
Walt Whitman’s epic poem Song of Myself brings the world into the light and tells us that we are all one. “I celebrate and sing myself" (Whitman 882). The opening line of the poem is not a call for masturbation, but a reminder that if every person on earth takes care of
themselves, then harmony will follow. It is the stupid idea that loving ones self is wrong that has led us down this dark path. “And what I assume you shall assume" (Whitman 882) tells us that we know right from wrong it is all inside every one of us, but we rely on others to make the laws.
Deciding that we must change who we are to change others, is the first step in our training to become better world citizens. “I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of grass" (Whitman 882). The grass is life. It represents the human form. Billions of blades of grass congregate to make a lawn, just like millions of people make a city. To look deeper into a single blade of grass is to examine life itself. Yoda once said “You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you…me…the tree…the rock…Everywhere!”
In stanza #2 Whitman is in self realization mode. The details of where he is at the present moment are enlightening him to the wondrous possibilities that each moment, and beyond that, each thing on earth is important fabric for the quilt of life. “The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it" (Whitman 882), Excuse my while I kiss the sky?
By the time we reach stanza #5 we are a fully trained Jedi, and that which waits for us is the creation of life. The coolest thing about life is that in order to make life there must be love. Say what you will about, mistakes, rape and alcohol, some how, love must be there for life to bloom. If love is absent, the pregnancy must be terminated immediately for the sake of a better world. In stanza #5 Whitman addresses the presence of the soul. He then proceeds to make love with the soul. The soul and the poet are one as in all things in life. Amen.