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Tired but awake,
Oh Ginsberg and Kerouac -
I am beat
Rhys Hebbs Oct 2020
Those that weep,
oh weep ‘neath the shadowy, masked spectre of dreamless sleep,
where time refuses to define the state of the lost divine.
These are feeble sheep whom tragedy is want to reap,
whom when faced with fire turn away from the truth of its healing heat,
it is the Shepard’s of the herd who hurdle false virtues with tenacious leaps.

But why oh why should the best of mankind’s minds all dwell on the tortured side of hell?
They either submit to their anguished musings
or are crowned with the fruits of their immaculate offerings,
there is no compromise.
But who has brought back from the abyss, the truth of it?
and who only offers the seedlings of their sufferings?

Was it Nietche shielding the beaten beast of burden?
Was it Mark Twain is his converse between young and old,
of which motor best foretold mans immortal soul?
Was it Nero playing his fickle fiddle whilst Rome was razed to rubble?
Was it Jim Morrison dying with his wine upon the vine
whilst Indian ghosts crowned his fragile eggshell mind?
Was it Bobby Dylan with his ever changing soul touching his bones via lucrative lexicon?
Was it Julias Ceaser as he crossed with hardened heart across the rubicon?
Was it Buddha sitting ‘neath the quiet of his tree whilst the void whispered to thee?
Was it Jack Kerouac upon that rolling road of soulful life,
embracing with equal measure all love and ceaseless strife?
Was it the nameless brave whom have been lost to the ages
of times endlessly cascading pages?
Will it be You in your pursuit
of what your inner vision holds true?
Will it be me in my turbulent sea of bleeding dreams?
None can say but death itself, for he holds the skeleton keys
I used some of Jim Morrisons poetry to articulate the truth of his condition, I hope this leans within fair use, I will revise if otherwise
Marco Aug 2020
Holy, black typewriter, frenzied,
spits out strangers’ love letters, desperate, the ink band half dried
(but ultimately returns to its grave of  dust).
Withered books, yellow pages carelessly leafed through, devoured
(pay no heed to the traffic - walk and read),
falling from one pain into the next;
such are beginning and middle of these days...
And benzedrine fever dreams are fleeting,
as elusive as great insane private revelations
mentioning Ginsberg and Hendrix by name
- a swirling fata morgana of Buddha, Dharma, cult,
and a thousand angelic punks, punk angels, safety-pin-winged,
dreams about Neal and I (not I) being cops -
revealed to my hands in a crazy stupor, darkening and
illuminating the whole café, unaware-

and I know that Marlon knows a jeweler, knows
his hands -
how does that fit in here?

These days waste by, racing, crash-trickling like waterfalls,
like the Niagara Falls that made Joe cry -
and now I watch him cry,
shamelessly, inconsolable in the face of beauty,
crying like he’s never seen water,
as he hands me another case - Morpho menelaus -
dead, killed, (killed on Denver roads), escaping freedom
in the giant hands of a not-so-average Joe (secret hero of this poem),
his eyes glued on life, and full of tears
and his dad didn’t want a daughter neither, wanted no children at all-
And down in Mexico (where he is now, or was last)
the plywood violin plays the open-highway-blues
for a not-so-sober Jack who loves and hates and loses.
Somewhere amid the British-American chaos: a pair of twins
suffered at the hands of their mother,
suddenly forgotten on the road...

Speaking of “mother”: Soon I’ll miss a wedding, and
- come to think of it - so will Jack, won’t he,
the other one,
with his red lips and olive green canvas, with his
made-in-vietnam imitation of
father Dunkirk’s blood, fallen soldier, 1916 Jesus didn’t rise -
How to lose my mind positively, flush out the memories?
Swimming at midnight: the cold lake homely in my bones
all washed over by iodine-orange water.
Mark hums sweet country tunes, wheat between his lips, "hey la, my boyfriend's back" -
and the sun never sets
and the coffee is always cold
and all the pages are black.
And Springsteen lies on the nightstand, his spine turned to me,
sharing his makeshift bed with Kerouac and butterflies, and

a cruel storm of stories that sends my head spinning
makes it so that - unable to form in the hurricane -
poems cower in the back of my throat
like predators waiting to jump on their prey, and -
any minute now, I beg them, any moment-
but they shake their Rottweiler heads and bare their crocodile teeth,
taunting me, saying
that the wordy intelligence of others dumbs me down,
burns me out, charcoals my brain with the soot,
leaves me without originality; no
mind for my own words, no
regard for the verses crying to happen, only
the need to write, write, write,
stupidly, like a dog is forced by instinct,
the insatiable need to spill, to transform, to twist, distort, to prophesy, to-

Some  journal entry reads: healthy coping. Think:
Growth is inevitable.
God is inevitable!
Pain, and fury, and love, are inevitable! Luck -
To take this earth and make it yours,
this oyster,
and realize that it’s also everyone else’s;
(boys, no, kings of summer)
inevitably working together to create beauty,
only one glass case away from bewitching your living room,
from taking its seat right beneath the busy hand of God
and hold up the mirror:
this beauty was you all along. And me. And Him,
and everyone else.
This Father wanted a Son, wanted a daughter, even,
and,
suddenly,
this close to the face and hand and chest of God,
the old fear of 23 turns into excitement
with all our eyes, full of tears, glued on life -
still,
even now -
This is, essentially, a summary about my July in 2020.
Kevin Hudson Aug 2020
Children of giant cities

Polémiques


Distant voices and shrieks

Music to my ears

The stench of the concord river

Skeleton frames of rusted bikes

Marble blocks

Shoot up from

Kerouac Park
Nate Hoffman Feb 2020
I don't really know you.
The sparse details scattered across
Days unremembered yet unforgotten
Are but small glimpses to a life
Beyond my knowledge.

The true nature of your heart lies
Between the sunrise atop bumper crops
And the sky that holds it illusionary,
Yet the orange glow shines through my window
Every morning since our meeting.

Eastward drifts my soul,
Beckoned regardless of wakefulness;
Foreign things kept in choice vocabulary
Run away to from the moon
To only be considered there of--

Do I know you...?

I know how you went about your day when you
Woke up with a weight in your belly,
Groggy eyes squinted in sorrow and sleeplessness;
A tired mind running on hamster wheels with
Thoughts organized in bedhead disapproval,
Feigning extraterrestrial happiness
With bookwork and a cup of coffee,
Topped off with a bad taste in your mouth
And a blunt headache that didn't go away-

I know the monotonous capital of existence,
The placemat of our truths walked upon
Without a sole by the hustle imposed;
Drudgery felt like clockwork in the digital a.m
Shining neon "Go! Go! Go!" and you go,
"go. go. go..."

As I have gone...
As we have gone together...
As we'll have come before and since,
In shared moments of stasis every morning
We rise-

I will not forget how you greeted the day,
Not to yourself or your love or your household
But to myself and blessed others in those morning hours,
Knowledgeable and fierce,
Optimistically aware of every day past and upcoming,
Guiding the times as if set to sculpture

-Arisen is the phoenix at dawn,
Flamed feathers spawn the day
As we greet the nighttime gone;
I don't know you,

Not really, anyway.
Mark Toney Oct 2019
Long arm gendarme
My mistake namaste
Backpack bivouac
On the Road with Kerouac

Brilliant stars, silent nights
Fireflies, Northern Lights
Mountain streams, fresh air
Fall asleep anywhere

Small town, take a chance
Pig roast, barn dance
Allemande left!  Do-si-do!
Spontaneity here we go!

Long arm gendarme
My mistake namaste
Backpack bivouac
On the Road with Kerouac

Beat Zen's hey-day
Doing things our own way
Nonconformity, anything goes
Kerouac-Ginsburg-Burroughs

Shot to pieces, picking skin
Benzedrine, adrenaline
Don't forget the Phenergan
Notify our next of kin

Long arm gendarme
My mistake namaste
Backpack bivouac
On the Road with Kerouac
7/15/2019 - Poetry form: Rhyme - "The Beat Generation was a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the 1950s. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition and experimentation with drugs...In the 1960s, elements of the expanding Beat movement were incorporated into the hippie and larger counterculture movements." (Wikipedia: Beat Generation) - Copyright © Mark Toney | Year Posted 2019
DC Hall Jul 2019
Relaxation
nothing shy of a superpower.
In a world of distractions
it's hard to stay strong.
To find real stillness and
peace in the moments between
all the happening.

These are the moments that count,
That i'll remember in the end.
The times Thoreau sought after at walden,
Kerouac at Big Sur.
The times I seek now
that keep the fire in me burning.
Making me believe that life
really is the gift
I once thought
it was
Nate Hoffman Dec 2018
In the backseat of two-door cars,
Cackling at the fog,
Admiring frosted trees;
The bizarre glories of the world
Lay before in stone-cold vibrations.

Go back Jack, do it again,
Watch the wheels turn round and round
To goodwill tidings on clear cut highways,
Circumventing the haze of the suburbs
In odors of gasoline and burnt wheels.

Potholes bounce under foot,
E.D billboards taunting men
On voyage to shopping malls.
Days off and lay offs,
Getting the light and stopped on red,
Gazing at the sun to let the comfort in
To infinity and be-be-beyond.

Lofty goals atop cascading mountains,
Lined with jagged rocks,
Going to **** in mighty avalanches.
Calling back to the fall back of worry,
Our troubled souls running against the wind
As we mountain-goat up cliffs
Looking pitiful bathed in
The northern lights.

Oh how the heavens opened up,
How coastline of rocky ridges
Exploded in mental ecstasy,
Perceived through sagging eyes
Damp with the excess of life.

We're back, Jack, doing it again,
Travelling down well-worn roads where
You and I, He and she and they,
And ancient enclaves of ancestors
Journeyed through joy and sorrow
And the millions of pixels of grey area in between.

We've walked, run, and drove,
Talking madly to ourselves
In the tired eyes of those who want
To do the same and with them we continue.
We live in ourselves,
In candy-coated falsehoods of our own design,
Happy with good reason and lovingness.
And at it all, in the scope of our truth,
We laugh.
I was asked to write a poem about time, so this one is abstractly about time
Kon Grin Jul 2018
ive seen the world all people same
we love we fear, deprived, insane
absolute mass and no division for the HQ supervision
we are Trialed in side by solicitude at night
blindfolded OF!
superiority of those that are biting in our nose
medicating under-eighteen that appear so differently
and thus don't reap the boredom we are destined to live through
im sorry that I'm different
and I'm sorry that I speak
for the nation of the flowers
all fragile but not weak
A call out to generation X
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