Here's a Poem:

While I—like most people, I think—have a limited tolerance for Beat poetry (maybe that's a generational thing? Maybe it's a getting-older thing? Maybe it's because nowadays it's not particularly cool to get all into your own emotions unless you've doused them in heavy irony/sarcasm? Maybe I'm making this all up?), this Gregory Corso poem strikes me as very appropriate to contemporary culture...or something like that. Mostly, it just made me smile and laugh a little bit when I came across it yesterday:

How Not To Die

Around people

if I feel I'm gonna die

I excuse myself

telling them "I gotta go!"

"Go where?" they wanna know

I don't answer

I just get outa there

away from them

because somehow

they sense something wrong

and never know what to do

it scares them such suddenness

How awful

to just sit there

and they asking:

"Are you okay?"

"Can we get you something?"

"Want to lie down?"

Ye gods! people!

who wants to die amongst people?!

Especially when they can't do shit

To the movies—to the movies

that's where I hurry to

when I feel I'm going to die

So far it's worked