The Needle - a poem by "Robert Service" a/k/a Ken Kesey

By Jack Brummet, ATIT Poetry Ed.



Cover of the last supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog - click to enlarge

Ken Kesey contributed this poem (among his other wonderful contributions) to The Last Whole Earth Catalog and supplement.  I read The Needle when it came out in 1971, attributed to Robert Service. It was undoubtedly written by Ken Kesey (maybe in conjunction with Ken Babbs).


Ken Kesey, back then


The Needle

by "Robert Service" 

First, brothers and sisters and spirits of our sphere,
I wish to make one thing perfectly clear;
During these last ten turnings of a year
I have been
Jacked-up, jerked-off, brought down, strung-out,
And I've
Holed up, come on, cooled off and hung out,
And I've
Rushed and flashed and flushed and twitched
And I've
Sniveled and snorted and bellowed and bitched
And I've
Been spaced out atoms in the heartless void
And a slightly-plotted tightly-knotted paranoid,
I've watched friends grin goodby as I spiraled down the drain?
I've had doctors shake their fingers at the fungus on my brain;
And I have called, friends and doctors, oh I have roared out my soul
From the compass busting bottom of the false magnetic pole,
But it was a place beyond friends or medicine's reach--
A senseless 3-D cry from a binary breach--
And the heartless void can listen but doesn't seem to care
And my call was never answered until the needle turned to prayer.
---o0o---
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