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Dreams of Sepia Aug 2015
The city's shrouded in smoke today
smoke coats my mouth, throat & eyes

& I know, I know.
       I should be writing in form,
in rhyme - villanelles, sonnets, terza rima
      some say there's too much free verse, some say, it's like
everyone's jumped on the bandwagon
       yet the most of the magazines still all want rhyme
                 but sometimes this is just the tune
                                    your heart sings, a broken smile
                                    & the way the images build up
                                        waiting to sail like ships in the harbor


& besides, should we really be writing in villanelles when we are the Mad & I see now, the best minds of our generation, the gifted,

the naked wastrels of the coming apocalypse,
talking to lamp posts, screaming of Ginsberg's Moloch

& the wrongs they did us, yet not destroyed even as we scream locked
behind whitewashed walls in razor-blade glint & halogenic

glow of ECT or walk the empty streets at guerilla dawn
& dusk, bearing the ample weight of our drugged-up minds

like those martyrs of the old Soviet Union & clinging
on to memoirs of our stolen, interrupted, spiritual awakening,

searching for the redemption of litter in this hobo life, 
changing countries like some change bed sheets,

others rooted by the invisible chains of familiarity & home, still calling
for the road, oh Kerouac, the fallen angels of tomorrow strung out on sweet

childhood memories & jazz in starved sunsets,
picking themselves up to pick at their scab wounds,

spitting at corrupt governments, bitter with alcohol,
writing poems of unrequited love to poets

far better than us, while Elvis croons
in the background & a Baboushka spits sunflower seeds

in the Russian town of my ancestors
& an open air film plays in black & white

& this colorless summer is nearly over
& they still haven't lifted their sanctions

them with their stone gods of war & psychiatry,
always lining up the next undesirables :

you could be next, yes you with the rainbow eyes
you the believer, you the dreamer of visions

Oh pity them, the children of smoke,
blind to the vagabond, the poet, the lover

lost children always seeking out the same roads
the city is shrouded in smoke

& I wonder if it's not always been there
& if we're living amongst blind men

ones that never read poems
or else how could all this happen
I was thinking of Ginsberg's ' Howl' when I wrote this - ' I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical naked'. & how these days what could be seen as brilliant, creative minds are locked up, labelled & drugged by psychiatry, my own experience of this.
Jared A Washburn Jun 2015
Allen Ginsberg, a raving madman, a man beyond the borders of normal
      once said, “Poets are ******, but see with the eyes of angels.”
His ranting howls, mere paradoxical clamorings (LOUDER).
His bootless, penniless, homeless cries, slight nonsensical musings.
His power subdued, his passion put-out, his well of enumerations run
      dry…

Can you hear him?

(LOUDER!!!)

Are you even listening?

What do holy angel-headed hipsters like he see?

A myriad of star-crossed artists, poets, gurus, and monks?
A tired and beat batch of street corner hustlers, homeless and hungry?
A drunk in the back-room bar?
A stumbling, shadowy silhouette in the by-street (an enigma...)?
An old man, philosophizing to everyone and no one but himself?
A juke box stuck on repeat?
A young couple, making love with their feet under the table?
A trio of jazz musicians out back for a smoke?
A bar maid making minimum wage, or nothing?
A priest who's losing his conviction?
A down-n-out loner, dreamy, dazed, dashed,
      staring at the bottom of his empty beer glass
      (who will buy the next round)?
A nosey cop?
A rosey fop?
A belligerent racist?
A beat runaway?
A child begging? (there are so many...)
A fed-up fanatic? (too loud, too loud…)
A would-be protester-rioter-anarchist, giving up and going home?
A giggling girl, flirting, with her skirt hiked high?
A show-off with an inferiority complex?
A shy recluse, too afraid to walk through the door?
A power-hungry politician, his propaganda blasting through the static of
      a detuned radio advertisement, paid for by (who are these people?)?
A struggle, never-ending, ever-renewed, always there, always alive,
      but only seen through crazy, mad, angelic eyes.
A tribute to Mr. Ginsberg, one of my favorite madmen.
Brycical Jun 2015
I appreciate your wary eye
for unsavory American types such as myself,
after all, that's the basis of which you set roots
and founded your name.
To be honest, I probably wouldn't let myself in
with such glowing hazel eyes that see depths
beyond crackling electric spirits
and a mouth with an honest tongue.

Oh Canada,
many friends have left my side over the years
because of this wagging tongue
communicating emotions with spring water clarity
splashing cold facts burning truth,
like when you asked how much cash I was carrying.
It was probably more than five-hundred bucks
but I'm not one to count that sort of thing.

Oh Canada,
does that make you nervous?
I realize I'm an odd bird with long hair and a beard.
I consider speaking truth a full-time job
without dental or health insurance but it's steady work--
although a little more dangerous than the norm,
just ask Edward Snowden or Chen Guangcheng.
But you shouldn't worry Oh Canada
because whatever saucy secrets I know of you
will probably be smoked out
once I smoke up one of the joints in my wallet.
Would you like a ****, Oh Canada?

Oh Canada, I can see my friends
on the other side of the glass door.
They're waiting patiently for me to join
so we can hum vowels in parks together
This is the kind of work we do,
paid with our own currency of attention and presence.
You should join us, just for a day and I promise
you'll feel rejuvenated, better than you have in months!
Oh Canada, are you upset we don't put price tags on everything?

Oh Canada, it's sweet you're thinking of my well being,
seriously. In a weird way it shows you care,
though your drooling focus on my wallet is a tad disconcerting.
You didn't even mention the ******.
And yes, I realize my business cards are out of date,
but I can't decide how to categorize my job
as a shitkicker and wordsmith.
Maybe you could help me out with that?

Canada,
do you need a hug?  Is that it?
You seem tired, which I can understand
having to constantly worry about the drunken empire below
descending into militarized police tribes
while everyone watches Kardashian drama.
Truth be told I've always felt out of place there,
hence why I'd appreciate a reprieve.  
Don't worry dear Canada, I'm not hiding any drones,
I can't even hide the truth.
Inspired by Ginsberg's poem "America" and also being refused entry into Canada.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Naked Lunch*

A naked lunch is natural to us
We eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don't hide the madness.
   From: *Reality Sandwiches
My least favorite Beat, but I've always liked this.
JM Romig Apr 2015
everybody’s angel bodies
find happening midnight
on Kansas pavements
hipsters’ motherwords are wholely robed by time
instant everything is ordinary
buggered city  immortals --
annoyed, parentless, marijuana everymans
swiftly digging unknown eternity
groaning strange in the long mysterious night
roaring, vibrating kindness
from their holy tongues
blazing inner hideous human gold
draining ***** forever
draining everything
forever -
Moloch, Buddha, Abyss
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Mostly a Cutup from "Daydreaming of Ginsberg" by Jack Kerouac, and "Footnote to Howl" by Allen Ginsberg. NaPoWriMo 2015

To make sense of it, imagine its explaining the modern world to the beat generation in their own language.
Looking heavenward, I see only the earth.
The stars align and the planets turn,
But what of the holy?

Archangels sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
And the collared cherubim bleed into the rainswept gutters
Like cut dogs in cardboard boxes by the highways of New York,
Or the roadsides of back-alley Brooklyn or Paterson,
Where the demonic masses lie naked in the streets,
Their souls bared raw to heaven
And their hair as messy as sidestreet dumpsters.

The misted rain fogs on the busted double glazing,
The bare limbed trees outside fallen victim to a long winter
And a late spring.
The air that blows through the streets of these mundane cul-de-sacs
Has passed through the lungs of cancerous dodgers
In those hell-indulgent cities,
Where children find their kicks by freerunning
Across buildings of bricks made from c-grades,
Or by standing atop high-rises in the grey wind,
And biting their tongues only to feel their own consciousness
Burrowing into them
Like parasites from the condemning schoolhouses or university halls.

You’re alone when your skies turn grey,
And the rain falls with all the purposeful intent of a neon god.
You’re alone when your smashed milk bottles and broken plates
Are like music on those drug-dampened dawns,
You’re alone when your cold, ash-stippled roof gardens
Are your only way to heaven,
You’re alone when your fingers are cut on your own writing
And you are dizzy from spinning yourself sick
Alone in your splintered art lofts.

Your stars are misaligned and your planets need engine grease to turn,
And you sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
But you still look heavenward.
You see your madness in the same silver moon
That compels the tide and transfixes wolves,
You recognise yourself in newspaper clippings proclaiming ******,
You acknowledge your expression in broken syringes
And powder remnants
On the glass-topped coffee tables of water-dripping apartments,
You feel your heartbeat in the gasolined engines
Of stuttering Cadillacs
And taste your own warm lifeblood in the burgers of roadside diners.

You see cosmological galaxies bursting like Van Goghs,
Horrible, bitter-cold starstorms underneath white skies,
Raindrop-dripping garden leaves in shrubberies and verges
And earthy rockeries,
You dream of enlightened, ***-smoking boys in beat-up trailers
And the cluttered box rooms of sky-high apartments,
Of screeching atop stone-cragged mountains of green in highlands,
Of bell-rung harbours in the white seaside towns of England,
Of the salt-chapped lips of fisherwives
And the bone-skinny children of sailors,
Of visionary angels in stained glass cathedrals,
Of the cobbled thoroughfares of lamplit cafes in a Parisian purgatory.

And yet you lie naked on floors,
You lie high on floors and let visions spill from your hands
Like the whiskey you drink.
You are under us now,
Under the earth like meat sacks.
But your vision lives on
In every piece of self-indulgent fuckery written for you,
In every copy of your collected works
Or your novels.

Seek,
Live,
****,
Die.
For you are immortal, in the end.
**** ending, but endings are hard.
Robert Varblow Mar 2015
Ginsberg, Kerouac, Whitman
understood the importance of poetry,
words from a good universe that make the world
admit a secret: that the best way to live
is to grab hold of life
and not let go,
to love
and not be ashamed,
to write from the universal soul
     for what hides in the universe is verse.

Everyone thinks
    that not everything
can be fantastic
     but the secret is
that Everything is

     Kerouac wrote,
'no time for poetry
but exactly what is”
     the truth is that everything is poetry:
tying your shoes to go to school
a cool breeze on a too sunny day
a lover's warm thigh
the stars,
that remind me that we all have
something in common

     Is the earth not poetry?
The wind on your cheek
     not the meaning of existence?
The music you hear
     not the voice of god?
This love, at the very least,
     not a reason to wake up tomorrow?
Robert Varblow Mar 2015
If I die tomorrow
at least I have this moment:
    cold water
as if from a mountain stream
(really from a soda fountain) and
yellow light illuminating Ginsberg
who sits beside me
and says "live".
Written while reading Howl
Tyler McCarthy Nov 2014
What thoughts I have of you tonight, hidden friend, for I skipped through the grey with a head full of brightness that managed to seep on through.
In one of my short wanders, I passed by dreaming of a future with you filling up the void.
What rules to break, what numerous revelations to be sought after,
the safety net has a tear the size of a watermelon.

I saw you, my little trapeze *******, doing a balancing act fit for the judges. Who are you trying to impress, who else would you dance for?
Are you the wolf at my door?
I wandered between those strings, pressed back from fear of spiders.
We couldn’t there’s too much guilt, a dead swan on the lake,
Never is there room for another prodigal’s son.

Where are we going with all this, is there a light you're following that I don’t see? You’re being called elsewhere, I understand,
but if i never see you again let me feel the lack.
Meanwhile we will tame the tigers with whips and chairs, we will shout into microphones from across the room. Crowds before us, all hungry for a show, to see the performance of our lives. Ah Pandora, you may leave your box closed for now as I fear this ballerina has caught a bad case of stage fright, along with the tigers.
a response to *A Supermarket in California*  by Allen Ginsberg
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