The Ecphorizer

It's All in Your Mind
Neal Wilgus

Issue #08 (April 1982)

Turn the searchlight inward, Mahatma Ghandi said.
But who the hell has spotlights
in the middle of his head?

The kingdom is within you,
said Jesus and Tolstoy.
But if the kingdom causes cancer
it might be best not to annoy.

I've traveled far in Concord,
wrote the naturalist Thoreau.
But how the hell he did it
is more than I can know.

Free at last, free at last,
said Martin Luther King.
But freedom too is mental --
at least I've learned one thing. 


Poet and Author Neal Wilgus lives in New Mexico, where he is practicing becoming ambidextrous.  He writes that he "works nights and weekends and hopes to live forever."

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Neal Wilgus

Neal Wilgus was born in Jerome, Arizona. He has a degree in English from Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, and moved to New Mexico while working for the US Forest Service in the early 60s. He is a prolific writer of poetry, science fiction, and satirical humor. His latest chapbooks are The Leakoids: Newsalizing the Nation, and Rhymed and Dangerous, a book of poems. Neal currently resides in Corrales, New Mexico, and works the night shift with his illustrator, Filo Martinez, who provided the sketch of Neal at right.