(In response to "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg)

I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by sanity,
seen bold new visionaries resign themselves to clinical long-haul deaths,
drug-numbed to their own suffering, and everyone else’s;
seen raving revolutionaries give up, retire to minimalist Swedish-designed armchairs,
and never move again;
seen the horizon dim and draw ever closer,
and the tenacious lunatics with the wanderlust to stray beyond
become fewer and further between.

There are uglier destructive forces than madness:
Consider cognitive rehabilitation.
Consider absolutely nothing immeasurable.
Consider utter rationality.

Ritalin, lithium, risperidone, duloxatine. [I thought I heard a man speaking in tongues,
then I realised he was simply reading out loud from a pharmaceutical directory.]
Imagine a generation of loan brokers and loss adjustors;
Hicks gone these past seventeen years and Leary still alive;
sharks floating in formaldehyde;
all true human significance lost in pretentious symbols,
and repetition
and repetition
and repetition,
and no one raging.
No one raging for real.

Where are Plato’s maniacs now?
Where are their lunatic songs?
I hear only the steady, rational tapping of the accountants’ calculators,
occasionally, some lost and lonely *** crying out for one more shot,
and the PA system calling the next patient through, the doctor will see you now,
or asking would the owner of a light blue Honda Civic please move their vehicle,
as it’s blocking in a black Lexus full of lawyers with an ambulance to chase.

Is there really nowhere between here
and the bellow and buzz, the shiver and shriek of the asylum?
Someplace between this sterile, static, silent, windowless room
and the fizzing frenzy of the electroconvulsion suite,
there must be somewhere we might have paused and breathed and set up shop,
where we could have been happy – if we’d wanted to be –
and no more or less sane than we chose.

Dr Thompson saw it coming: the dawn of this new Age of Equilibrium.
He knew that football season was over, for good this time, and made his ballistic decision
to go stalk peacocks and hound Nixon through the Kingdom Hereafter,
assuring us, ‘Relax – This won’t hurt’.
He was right.

Safe and stable and sanitized, we can no longer follow your desperate, ***** verse.
Straitjacketed by reason, we perceive our world only in terms
of quantum and co-efficiency, of the logical and logistical,
of what can be conjured in the duration of the average commercial break,
of what can be computed to at least two decimal places.

We are the chemically castrated.
We are lobotomised by mutual consent.
We are the perfect ones: regular and moderate and so healthy, so functional.
We are the white strobing smiles of the toothpaste ads,
the poster children for good mental hygiene,
the footsoldiers of no more conflict.

We have lost our skill for the alchemy
that once distilled genius from the seething crucible of lunacy.
We medicate those whose vision would otherwise put our own to shame,
leave them as myopic and blinkered as the rest of us,
the breadth and depth and distance of their sight no longer a worry to anyone.

Give us back our madmen: we need them.
Give us back our crazed anthems, our burning shrouds, our leprous one-man-bands.
Give us back the fire and the filth and the fornication that kept us howling through
those endlessly polluted nights of Windscale and Watergate, McCarthy and motorcades, Hanoi and Hiroshima.

Please.  Give us back our madmen.
I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by sanity.

The crucifix on the wall
invites me to my favourite passage
from the Blessed, Sacred Scriptures.
In Saint Matthew our Lord's words
are shared in the Sermon on the Mount.

Reading them brings such peace
to the jumble of emotions I trend.

I wonder why these poignant words
have not penetrated into this world.
Seems odd that such wisdom and truth
is left aside as we pursue other goals.

Graves are dug in the mind, yes they are.
That's where the truth begins and ends.

Ignorance exists with point of view,
and nothing exists without attitude.

We grasp at straws and eat the filth
that permeates from our advanced lies.
Stop in at Mass, only when it suits us
and only when we feel it is necessary.

Hear the Gospel, nod at the sermon.
Check our watches to see the time.
Line up to consume the Body of Christ,
running out after back to our deceits.

In the softness of the mid-day world
I read the words of our Sacred Saviour.

The message compels me to understand
in how many ways I have wasted energy
as I've flickered and formulated over
the insignificance of mundane worrying.

Now that a time limit has been suggested,
it seems time indeed to remember that
if salt loses its flavour, how shall it be
seasoned? This is a thought to consider!

Our Father who art in Heaven, come
into my walk and lead my feet to You.

Farther away, where the cars
are all painted dull black,
        and the
         leaves on the ground
           have
           already died,
      that is where the
       walls are being built.

Strong walls. Walls of
impregnable fortitude.
    Walls that will
        never be
          overcome.

Behind them, that
is where I shall be.
        Hidden.
         Forgotten.
Put aside to live
      with all the
        other people
         behind these stones.

We will be quiet here.
Dwelling thoughts lost
        in managing
        individual funeral pyres.
Outside these fortified rocks
      will be the footsteps
      of people who do
       not care to see
         anything beyond
         what they feel is
         marvellously important.
Pecking fingers on their
       cell phones
       in their peculiar, solitary
       way of being a
          "community".

We might hear them
    from time to time,
distant sounds
    that penetrate the
      rock fed monster
      we have built to
       surround our
         last moments.

Water falls in a
    rainfall of passion.
Cups hold liquids
    that are never drunk.
We share the same
    determined falling,
ending up the same
    kind of dead.

Goodbye people
      outside our walls.
Thank you for
       peering at us
        once in awhile.
And now the Biblical gates
       are opening.
Now the walls around
       us are shattered.
Leaving here, we
    become the pictures
        on an internet page;
where people will
      write R.I.P. in
        the comments.
A like button
    will be pressed,
       as they move on
        to the next entry.

Conversations over.
Memories diffused.

Stones from the wall
    fashioned into tombstones.
Names etched on them,
       and some plastic flower arrangements
         all that remains.

My hair is thinning
My bones are creaking
I feel the cold breeze hit every vertebrae as I assend into a room.
My bones are more like spikes now.
Jabing everthing I touch.
You must handle me gently.
For the lightest squeeze can bruise me.
When my trouble began i was an insperation.
But now, I dont recognize who i am.

Walking down the street
I see things I never thought I'd see
The sun shining
The birds chirping in the trees

Three years ago today
I felt alone and in the way
I saw no other option
I couldn't stand another day

Now, sun shining down
Illuminating arms attacked and drowned
I realize that my life isn't for naught
Even if too often I still don a frown

Those nights I laid
Alone and afraid
Scared not of death, but of life and what I may do
Thinking of the things to myself I had said

So do not fear
Do not think of ending it here
You're a book, and this is simply the thickening plot
There's so much more still left to hear

Do not look to me though
In your time of fear and woe
I'm no example to be modeled after and loved
I'm simply a story, not a savior aglow

I know you know what I'm talking about
Why else would you read this awful stout
You know all too well of the poisonous thoughts
And too well you know the nightly bout

Anonymous I write to you
Why now I'm only in my bed, probably like you
It's at night before I sleep, when these things plague my mind
But I'm sure I don't have to explain that to you