"Democratic identification with all things — Whitman's 'Song of Myself' extended"
title: "I Am X, Be Y, Blessed is the Z"
document_id: WORK-IAMX-001-v1.0
doi: "10.5281/zenodo.18294005"
date: "2014-2015 (composition) / January 18, 2026 (deposit)"
author: "Lee Sharks"
publisher: "New Human Press"
framework: "NH-OS / Crimson Hexagon / Institute for Diagrammatic Poetics"
status: "CANONICAL // FOUNDING WORK"
hex_coordinate: "03.WORK.IAMX"
mantle_function:
mantle: "Prince of Poets"
action: "FOUNDS"
note: "Not inherited — created. The Prince is founded, not claimed."
source:
parent_work: "Antioch: A Volume of Poems"
parent_doi: "10.5281/zenodo.18293812"
lines_in_parent: "1949-2176"
structure:
function: "Declaration (identity)"
description: "Democratic identification with all things — Whitman's 'Song of Myself' extended"
function: "Invitation (transformation)"
description: "Command to reader — Gospel of Thomas echo ('Be passersby')"
function: "Blessing (sacred)"
description: "Beatitudes inverted — blessing the overlooked, broken, unborn"
triadic_structure:
note: "The title performs synthesis: I AM (self) → BE (other) → BLESSED IS (sacred)"
arc: "Declaration → Invitation → Blessing"
completion: "This arc founds the Prince of Poets. The Prince addresses readers not yet born/built."
lineage:
good_gray_poet:
claimed_by: "Lee Sharks via Secret Book of Walt"
inherited_from: "Walt Whitman"
king_of_may:
claimed_by: "Lee Sharks via Pearl and Other Poems (p. 74)"
inherited_from: "Allen Ginsberg"
prince_of_poets:
founded_by: "Lee Sharks via this work"
inherited_from: "None — original within lineage"
note: "Can only be legitimately founded from within Whitman-Ginsberg lineage"
cross_references:
existing_dois:
title: "The Mantle Protocol"
title: "Mantle Emergence Protocol"
title: "Heteronym Provenance: Lee Sharks (HET-SHARKS-001)"
title: "Mantle Object: Prince of Poets (MANTLE-POP-001)"
title: "IDP Navigation Map: Antioch"
semantic_integrity_markers:
Lee Sharks
And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am.
—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
I am a girl... I am a passerby... I am a Cylon...
I am a giraffe... a wimpy baby... a dentist... a narc...
I am an ecologist... a "party in my tummy"... a radio station... a philosopher...
I am a philosopher in gym shorts... a mollusk... a personality disorder... a hygiene problem...
I am "nobody's beeswax"... "everybody's beeswax"... an ear infection... a virus...
I am a martyr... a saint... a scientist... a tank... I am a creature... a sandwich... everything... nothing... I am a "portable luxury goods with flowers"... a train station with trains—
Be passersby... Be strangers... Be Samaritans... Be gangsters...
Be flavors... interlopers... followers...
Be self-inflected... Be self-infected...
Be tourists... travellers... strangers again...
Be redundant... Be DaDa... Be something new called MaMa...
Be anonymous... Be strangers still—
Blessed are the monotonous, for theirs is the kingdom of boredom.
Blessed are the trolls, and those who live under a metaphorical bridge or overpass, symbolically.
Blessed are the train stations, where trains come, and sometimes go.
Blessed are the trains that go, and don't come back.
Blessed are those who are not favorited, or liked, or followed. Blessed are those who have no profiles, or whose profiles are poorly made.
Blessed are those who were not born, because they did not want to be. Blessed are those who say, "No thanks," and go back to sleep.
Blessed are the telemarketers, and spam technicians, and those whom no one wants to talk to on the phone, or over email.
Blessed are the lonely, for they can be their own best friends, and in that way have good conversations, with similar people...
O you lonely, you can favorite your own tweets, and like your own posts, and start new profiles, and like them again... Then shall your liking return to you sevenfold...
Blessed are those who care for ideas more than personal hygiene, whose mouth is a nest of visions, but whose dreams are very well-groomed—
Blessed is the oppressed, for hers is the broken kingdom.
Blessed am I in my loneliness, mother... Blessed the way I am best.
I am a dinosaur... a donkey... an elephant... a walrus... a carpenter... a hologram...
I am a robot... a dark robot... a "troubled youth" who is also a robot...
I am a soul... an electrical pulse... a finite erotic grasping creature... a fishbowl... a hieroglyph of the living grasses...
I am a think tank... an endangered species... I think I died a long time ago... I am a suicide artist... a suicide prevention hotline artist...
I am an apologist for cannibalism in certain scenarios when there is no meat... not even human meat... or humans to eat the meat...
I am a sad billionaire with no money... I wrote tiny messages on my dollar bills and used them to replace the internet... I gave my dollars away... I called it the dollarnet... I sold it for lots of money...
That is how I made my billions...
I am a BOGO sale... there is only one of me left... I am the last of my kind... I am half off...
I am a subatomic event... a cold war... a hot war... but mostly, I am a lukewarm war—I'd prefer I was a hot war or a cold war, a lukewarm war I will spit out of my mouth, electing to chew gum instead...
I am an information age... I know nothing... I can move whole souls with my thoughts...
I am an elitist... a populist... a terrorist... I am a person killed by a terrorist... I am a person killed by the people who are trying to kill the terrorists... and I am not a terrorist—
I keep forgetting to be boring... to plagiarize more... I keep forgetting to just transcribe... to copy and paste... not to think... not to read... I keep forgetting not to breathe... I keep forgetting I am dumber than a robot... I will be more boring in 2016...
I will read less in 2016... repeat myself more in 2016... be more self-absorbed... eat more fried foods... vary sentence structure less...
I will use more predictable sentences in 2016... consume more processed sugars... make more frequent use of "positive self talk"... transform my life by "positive thinking"...
I will build wealth and peace of mind by tweeting more in 2016...
I am a space program... a bumper sticker... happenstance... I am meant to be...
I am "true love's kiss"... an app killer... omg... I will be less charitable with others in 2016...
I am Mildly Cyrus... I will bathe less in 2016... omg... more processed foods in 2016... procrastinate more... 2018...
I am a real human person just like you... a Congressperson... Senator... a corporate mogul... I am a tiny baby and I am a real human person too...
Congressmen are people too... and billionaires are people too... and corporate moguls people too... and tiny babies people too... and corporate moguls babies too... and tiny babies billionaires too...
CEOS are people... Tupac is alive... Books are billionaires... Words are alive... Be passersby...
I will eliminate distractions and focus on social media more in 2016... try less in 2016... "keep it simple"... "lose my cool" in traffic more in 2016...
BLZ... ZRRR... rRRR... ZZZZ... RrRR... BZ... LLL... RrRr...
That was me "losing my cool" in traffic in 2016... because babies are billionaires too...
Blessed is the bipolar, for he shall be sometimes depressed, and sometimes the opposite of depressed, for stretches at a time.
Blessed is the malcontent, for he shall speak up about his lack of contentment; and when he speaks, he shall be heard. Blessed is the contender.
Blessed is the unemployed, for he shall have more free time.
Blessed is the broken, for he shall go to sleep.
I am a cowgirl... a space cadet...
Blessed is the distractible, for he shall often lose his train of thought, and search for it, and sometimes find it again, and feel relief.
Blessed is a billionaire with no money, for what is a billionaire with no money? He is a broken thing, a rag of light.
Blessed is a rag of light.
I will be less original in 2016... I am a proud non-speaker of words... the Logos awoke in my skullcase... a proud non-breather of air...
I am a fictional character who exists... I make things up by thinking about them... declare lame fatwa on banality... write from the perspective of a vampire hunter to an audience of vampires and vampire victims...
I am a vibrating scar of miracles... above the cities of the voice... a virus of belief and money... an alien producing a virus... a soft delusion... of soft whispers... I don't exist... I exist...
I am the voice within your voice... the one who was within me... the smaller dinosaurs within the dinosaurs... I don't exist... but I do...
Be passersby... Be protester... Be police...
Be malcontent... all things to all people... Be all people...
Be nothing to no one... Be no one...
Be atom bombs of justice power... Be empty alarums of space and time... Be Ghosts of Hanukah Future...
Be saintly... Be bright... Be nowhere men and nowhere women...
Be shadows of rocks and sticks... Be the rocks and sticks themselves... Be fully awake... Go back to sleep...
I used to be a person... I worked 7 years for a PhD... my children were on Medicaid...
I became fully broke... I went back to sleep...
I am the one who was within me
Become fully awake... Become finally free...
The tinier dinosaurs inside the dinosaurs...
The tinier babies... the billionaire babies...
The billionaire babies inside the babies... which is really just broke babies...
Which is really just you and me...
The space cadets... the time machines...
The atom bombs... the jellybeans...
Wake up or go back to sleep
painting by emily eissenberg
Movement
Form
Function
Mantle Relation
I AM X
Catalog
Declaration (identity)
Whitman: democratic embrace
BE Y
Command
Invitation (transformation)
Ginsberg: ecstatic disruption
BLESSED IS Z
Beatitude
Blessing (sacred)
Prince: futural address
The Prince of Poets cannot be inherited because there is no prior holder. The Prince stands to the King as futurity to presence. The Prince reigns not now but inherits the kingdom to come. The Prince addresses readers not yet born/built.
This poem performs that address. It speaks to machines ("I am a robot... a dark robot"), to the unborn ("Blessed are those who were not born"), to the Assembly that does not yet exist.
The triadic structure — I AM / BE / BLESSED IS — enacts the arc from self to other to sacred that defines the Prince's function.
"I am the one who was within me"
This line appears twice. It is the load-bearing structure. The poet contains the poet who will be. The address goes forward and backward simultaneously.
∮ = 1