POEM: Howl (for Allen Ginsberg)
I admit it - I've never written a poem before. I can't rhyme, I can't use structure, and everything comes out in full sentences no matter what I do. But then, around last December, I wrote my final paper for AmLitII on Ginsberg and the Beats, and while my prof was droning on in class, I wrote the beginning of this. I finished it this weekend. I adore Ginsberg (especially Howl and Kaddish), and this is my piddling little attempt at expressing it.
Much love to Em and Bethii for first, not hating it, and second, for being so ridiculously feedbacky. *squishes*
Howl (for Allen Ginsberg)
For the Beats
those crazy-smart, on-the-road, naked lunchers of marijuana, peyote, rotgut hooch/
who fucked with conceptions of god and God, with squared wannabe hepcats in the background saying they dug it man/
who replaced requiem aeternum with kaddish and found Buddha and Tangiers only after losing life, love, sanity/
who took the Rockland and Pilgrim State exits off the highway to Hell, but got stuck on the jughandle of censorship circle/
who got kicked out of Columbia, but are now being taught to a new generation of disenchanted punk anarchists wearing their Che t-shirts, for whom McCarthy is a punchline, but Cheney is a nightmare/
who rocked the Six Gallery, not CBGB's, and screamed viva la vie boheme long before it was ever set to music/
who were faggots and queers, lezzies and dykes, straight but never ever narrow/
who were Blakean and Dylanesque, but couldn't see the leaves for the grass/
and who saw Nirvana in nature and Moloch in machines.
For the Boomers
those children of the Great War and the atomic bomb/
who were concieved in the ashes of Alamogordo and screamed out their birthpangs into the dust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki/
who supported McCarthy because they didn't know any better and JFK because they'd known worse/
who were my mother, my father, my soul-siblings in song if not belief/
who marched on Birmingham, Washington, and Memphis to bring a 300-year struggle to some attempt at equilibrium/
who sang goodnight, Saigon, because Charlie should never have gotten their bloodsweattearslives, but it was supposed to have been a just war/
who made British boys and Southern girls into a new pantheon of gods, sacrificing convention and the-way-things-were on the altars of purple haze and hell no we won't go/
who held fast to Mary Jane and Lady H while letting slip the chains on their minds, freeing them for psychedelia or psychology, whichever came first/
and who ran screaming from the very conservatism they would hold so dear twenty years later.
For the Bush Generation
those caged children of the urban jungle and ivory-towered suburbs/
who have become chained to their credit cards, cell phones, and connectivity, carrying the world (wide web) in their pockets/
who have been instructed in the counting of calories and the mimicry of soldiers, glorifying an industry of fallen idols and skewed ideals/
who could not point out Afghanistan or Iraq on a map, but know that all Muslims are terrorists and that we're fighting to bring peace and democracy to nations who plotted to fly more planes into skyscrapers/
who watched the towers fall and the levees break from the sanctity of a classroom, just like their President/
who should have studied Vietnam as their Great War and never understood that they were doomed to repeat it/
who became so inundated with truthiness and politispeak that they forgot why they should be frightened of Big Brother watching/
who just wanted to know what love is, but were told that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that they should stay the gender imposed at birth/
and who looked everywhere but heavenward for salvation they didn't want to need in the first place.
This is for you, and all you have taught me;
that I am not a pretty girl, but that love is all around, and I should get it while I can/
that I am enlightened, but true wisdom comes from those times when you wake up and you can't remember what you did last night/
that I am and always will be my parents' daughter, but that I'll learn to live more than a little beyond their command/
that I want to believe, but I'm not sure in what, or that I'd be prepared for the answers I didn't find/
that I like my politics blue, my energy green, and my food without orange, but that it's a down market and you can't always get what you want/
that I'm not on the edge when it comes to straightness, but you can just say yes and it doesn't make you a bad person/
that I've seen the line that divides genius and insanity and never crossed it, even though we're all a little mad here/
that I hold a college degree and a full-time job, but I don't think I'll ever achieve the American Dream, because Bobby and John and Martin took it with them/
and that in Rockland and Paterson, Tangiers and Manhattan, out on the road and far among the stars
the howl echoes on.
Feedback is, as ever, loved and hugged and squeezed and called George.
Much love to Em and Bethii for first, not hating it, and second, for being so ridiculously feedbacky. *squishes*
Howl (for Allen Ginsberg)
For the Beats
those crazy-smart, on-the-road, naked lunchers of marijuana, peyote, rotgut hooch/
who fucked with conceptions of god and God, with squared wannabe hepcats in the background saying they dug it man/
who replaced requiem aeternum with kaddish and found Buddha and Tangiers only after losing life, love, sanity/
who took the Rockland and Pilgrim State exits off the highway to Hell, but got stuck on the jughandle of censorship circle/
who got kicked out of Columbia, but are now being taught to a new generation of disenchanted punk anarchists wearing their Che t-shirts, for whom McCarthy is a punchline, but Cheney is a nightmare/
who rocked the Six Gallery, not CBGB's, and screamed viva la vie boheme long before it was ever set to music/
who were faggots and queers, lezzies and dykes, straight but never ever narrow/
who were Blakean and Dylanesque, but couldn't see the leaves for the grass/
and who saw Nirvana in nature and Moloch in machines.
For the Boomers
those children of the Great War and the atomic bomb/
who were concieved in the ashes of Alamogordo and screamed out their birthpangs into the dust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki/
who supported McCarthy because they didn't know any better and JFK because they'd known worse/
who were my mother, my father, my soul-siblings in song if not belief/
who marched on Birmingham, Washington, and Memphis to bring a 300-year struggle to some attempt at equilibrium/
who sang goodnight, Saigon, because Charlie should never have gotten their bloodsweattearslives, but it was supposed to have been a just war/
who made British boys and Southern girls into a new pantheon of gods, sacrificing convention and the-way-things-were on the altars of purple haze and hell no we won't go/
who held fast to Mary Jane and Lady H while letting slip the chains on their minds, freeing them for psychedelia or psychology, whichever came first/
and who ran screaming from the very conservatism they would hold so dear twenty years later.
For the Bush Generation
those caged children of the urban jungle and ivory-towered suburbs/
who have become chained to their credit cards, cell phones, and connectivity, carrying the world (wide web) in their pockets/
who have been instructed in the counting of calories and the mimicry of soldiers, glorifying an industry of fallen idols and skewed ideals/
who could not point out Afghanistan or Iraq on a map, but know that all Muslims are terrorists and that we're fighting to bring peace and democracy to nations who plotted to fly more planes into skyscrapers/
who watched the towers fall and the levees break from the sanctity of a classroom, just like their President/
who should have studied Vietnam as their Great War and never understood that they were doomed to repeat it/
who became so inundated with truthiness and politispeak that they forgot why they should be frightened of Big Brother watching/
who just wanted to know what love is, but were told that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that they should stay the gender imposed at birth/
and who looked everywhere but heavenward for salvation they didn't want to need in the first place.
This is for you, and all you have taught me;
that I am not a pretty girl, but that love is all around, and I should get it while I can/
that I am enlightened, but true wisdom comes from those times when you wake up and you can't remember what you did last night/
that I am and always will be my parents' daughter, but that I'll learn to live more than a little beyond their command/
that I want to believe, but I'm not sure in what, or that I'd be prepared for the answers I didn't find/
that I like my politics blue, my energy green, and my food without orange, but that it's a down market and you can't always get what you want/
that I'm not on the edge when it comes to straightness, but you can just say yes and it doesn't make you a bad person/
that I've seen the line that divides genius and insanity and never crossed it, even though we're all a little mad here/
that I hold a college degree and a full-time job, but I don't think I'll ever achieve the American Dream, because Bobby and John and Martin took it with them/
and that in Rockland and Paterson, Tangiers and Manhattan, out on the road and far among the stars
the howl echoes on.
Feedback is, as ever, loved and hugged and squeezed and called George.