Thick pretty smoke stacks chafe the faces
of stand-alone city youngins
kneeling on side streets with their knees in murky drain water
on the dirty asphalt, circling a dented stop sign.
And next to the sun-worn mural of Jack Kerouac, burning fumes
and sugar strips throw a film of
distortions on the eyes of the already-blind
censored minds of middle class America.
It’s 1964 and the times have changed. The music just got good
and there’s this thing called freedom.
That’s the word on the street, and it used to only ring a bell
but recently there’s a beat of a drum never
heard over these boxy radios, never seen on TV shows
and it’s not left to anyone — no moms, no teachers,
no dads, no kids, no beavers. ‘Cause now,
that makes no sense.
And the only thing that works is a four-letter word —
B.E.A.T. — and it spells out recovery in any light.
And people love the smell of unwatched life, even through
the choking smoke clouds intoxicating
the air with high hopes and fingers shot higher,
like a bird with new wings, flying over things
as crazy as kids praying to an eight-sided red warning,
beat-in, ‘cause someone wouldn’t be stopped.