'i've only ever really read one poem. i, i have to admit.*  
You know, that, that one poem that everyone’s read, whatsit,
Howl by Ginsberg, 'best-minds-of-my-generation-destroyed-by-madness,-starving-hyste­rical-naked,' , yeah, that one;'
'It's just, I identify with it so strongly.' she says,
'That poem is soo me.'
It's funny how commentary on a generation 60 odd years ago come across as timeless insights..
how we learn that true spirit of rebellion and counterculture three generations ago,
  as it is taught to us by two generation ago countercounterculture academics.
but I guess, inevitably
                                         we
                                                  return,
  to those half drowned pontifications inevitably decried into transcendental truth by the onward spilling ratchet of cultural recognition;
  that sense of universal oneness generated by the unwashed ramblings of beat-generation hipsters dense innuendo in run on sentences running, running from their upper-lower-middle-class New York homes and their privilege of true vacant meaninglessness and despair,
   to those nervous tucked in shirted clean shaven scholars swooning over the same seme drugged, melancholic bearded men profussing the deepest of opaque truths only found up the furthest reaches of their own *****.
  As we push through to our lectures, the mosaic in motion of blazer wearing mac-users and mac-pac wearing blazers,
  As we hysterically interpret the formatting conditions for our reports, which could hang in the balance of whether the dreams we once had will ever be actualised,
  As we felt lost and found and found and lost at those park benches under the stars, where occasional strangers strolled by offering sessions and life-stories,
  As we paid exorbitantly to get out of our parents homes, and into tin-can flats with broken windows, absentee landlords and cracked paint only held together by all the moss, (the empowerment that is wage slavery,) for in our youth, poverty is not an ever-present pejorative, but the rite of passage to show that we are alive,
  As rituals of manhood are defined by two things and two things only; how much insomnia one can accumulate to meet insane and inane deadlines, and how much one can illuminate the walls in ***** from all the beers, spirits, cheap wines and questionable home-brews,
  As the government dismantles the human-rights commission, and we nervously attend the rallies initiated by the radicals, and the man on the megaphone calls on the crowd to chant and we can only mumble and laugh nervously at ourselves,
  And when the next speaker runs onto stage feeling the need to plead to this already nervous, placid mass that this is in-fact a PEACEFUL PROTEST, and that we are all true patriots and they insist everyone start singing the national anthem and we all look down and we again mumble, or pretend somehow not to hear them,
  and when, in this biggest independent rally around a unified cause our generation's ever seen, we have never felt so alone ,
  and isolated,  
                                  we
                                             remember,
                                                                    those earlier days,
  When we'd bleach our hair; we'd poison ourselves white, in the vain mystic hope that this was just the transition period to the time when we'd get true colour into our lives,
  Remember our wonder at the Eurocentric Asiatic television representations of the Abrahamic faiths, given transubstantiated holy revival by the medium of Saturday morning digital pastel pasture; when we were children staring excited and wide eyed into the Metatrons Fire of Sinai 'Random Almighty Mega Damage'; as Dante and the seraph class Tyrant-infused-Michael inevitably made battle with YHWH, -in the one True End,- as we grinded within the monolithic emerald obsidian halls, Mystical wonderment spilling forth from our reddened hollow eyes, at the beautiful unlimited expansive world contained within our console/consoling digital unit discs; conformally mapped and etched into the convex hull of our minds,
  Where we were gods, doing battle with every possible creature in morphospace, filleted into overpriced cards and cartridges, for which our strategies meant so much to us though none of us really understood the game,
  When we could quote verbatim every piece of dialogue in GTA2, and get concerned glances from our parents as we conjured veiled imagery of bukake-ladled innuendo which we didn't really understand until six or seven years later,
  When sexuality was a special secret club our elders and the kids in the years above came across so wise for being a member of, rather than an anti-turing test; a farcical ritual where everyone tries their best to imitate the hyper-reality of MTV while hiding the nervous feelings that this whole thing was really meant for someone other than us,
  When creating a whole new lexicon for our self-hood (be it artistic, ******, political or philosophical) felt like existential emancipation; a transcendental rebellion against the normalising identities and semantics of old, rather than an impenetrable circle-**** taxonomy,
  When one day we'd unveil a new term in some text, and it would completely change our outlook on every corner of our lives,
  Or, the next day, when we'd give up and just sit back on rolling banks, and look out at a veil of stars,
  Or the next day, when we'd wonder desperate and painfully, which of the last two was the real pursuit and which was wasted time? (Or was it this day, the day spent building an illusory dialectic between them?)
  Remember when we were in kindergarden, and you had to pass through the kitchen, -the adults zone,- to get to the toilet, and you'd feel both shame and wonderment listening in of the snippets of conversation muttered by these titanic figures; discussing abstruse issues from the newspaper in foreign yet noble tongues?
  Remember when we were teens, and every form-checking observation and question from these same adults was so painstakingly pedantically banal and asinine, that one could only respond with monosyllabic grunts and silent hysterics?
  And remember as 'young adults', when we'd inevitably entered this same dull Aristotelian world of forms, how we'd ask the same adults for advice on filling these paperworks, at once still asemic gibberish, and at once the fine-print that contained and predicted our lives?
  Remember when our dreams for the future were not bounded by the economy of our grade point averages and just how much debt we were willing to incur
                                …
I've seen the best minds of my generation climb into pre-packaged little boxes; and pay through the teeth for the privilege of doing so.  
  Akin to a 'Howl' they call it? Our cry for selfhood? What a scream.
It's not even a cry. Barely a whimper.
More of a zombified groan, completely aware our intrepid Journey of Self is just a pricey guided tour. (Tv Ad's static commodified existential emancipatory platitudes; 'your place in the world' / 'well it's my place and it's my time' urgh.)
And so we march asleep; all lame all blind.
  Trudging through the mind-fields; arguing, unravelling the semantic distinctions between the empty boundaries and the boundaries of emptiness.
  Transcribed down for essay deadlines,  /  assessing our lives trajectory as dead lines,
Becoming increasingly aware,
  We are not the living beings, the dasein, the Übermenschen being actualised; we are the machinery through which the institutions, the factories, the markets and education facilities actualise themselves.
  (While the only acceptable language we can breathe in opposition to these ratcheting pedagogical machines is the lexicon they provide us..
  ('oh, you hate systemic neoliberal alienation; the deestablishment of ontological anthropocentrism? Tell me more about the esoteric uselessness of academic culture.') bluh.)

But

       the more we follow those phantom images we built of ourselves,
the more we become aware they are but sirens; hypnotic dreamlike figures luring us to our doom,
  and as this awareness dawns; and the cognitive dissonances and schizophrenia grows,
       We


                                just try to keep calm and carry on regardless.

Can we really claim the arrogance of having a better path?
The conceit that there's a better cliff we should be guiding ourselves to to top ourselves off?
I don't know,
I reaally
really
just don't know.

" It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews,
            Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and  
                Illuminations from one End of this Continent
                      to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
      John Adams – July 3, 1776.

Webster Groves - 2016

The Townhall fountain dances
cheerily in the morning sun.
The red-white-blue shirted crowd
rises as one for the colors.
Laughing children scramble for
tootsie rolls and sweet tarts
tossed by a strolling  clown.

         Philadelphia, July 3, 1776

        Carriages sped toward Philadelphia
        where resolute patriots
        would turn the pages of history
        and tell an unsuspecting world
        that a new nation had given birth to itself.

Sousa strains peal from the marching Statesmen,
Girl Scouts guide their well-groomed mounts -
hooves echoing through concrete caverns.
Vintage firetrucks and autos
sound their horns and sirens
as candidates work the crowd, pressing the flesh.

        Each crass insult from the British crown
        had tightened the noose on the colonial neck.
        The middle ground was soaked with patriot blood
        and revolution was the only course left.

Barbecue clouds drift over Pat and Lee’s farm
Horseshoes spin and clang and frisbees fly.
A ***-luck feast with beans and franks
interrupts the pop and glare of bottle rockets.

        One by one, each patriot quilled the parchment
        resolved to endure the costs of liberty -
        knowing to the marrow that defeat
        would spell certain ******* and death.

We reach the lakeshore at dusk -
unfolding chairs - spreading out blankets -
strains of Americana drift over the lake.
then a pyro-technic extravaganza
blazes across the summer sky.  

        Washingon’s tattered and bloodied men
        cornered Cornwallis at Yorktown.
        Then surrender - all British claims
        to American soil banished to the tomes of history.

The grand finale pummels the darkened sky
raising cheers and whistles from the crowd
Toddlers collapse in parental arms,
car doors slam, engines ignite
and head-lighted caravans, turn for home,
spiraling off in every compass degree.

“Happy birthday,” America and endless happy returns
"from this time forward forever more!”  

Robert Charles Howard

WAGON WHEEL GAP is a place I never saw
And Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of ******* Creek.

Red-shirted miners picking in the sluices,
Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets,
The fly-by-night towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo,
The night-cool limestone white of Death Valley,
The straight drop of eight hundred feet
From a shelf road in the Hasiampa Valley:
Men and places they are I never saw.

I have seen three White Horse taverns,
One in Illinois, one in Pennsylvania,
One in a timber-hid road of Wisconsin.

I bought cheese and crackers
Between sun showers in a place called White Pigeon
Nestling with a blacksmith shop, a post-office,
And a berry-crate factory, where four roads cross.

On the Pecatonica River near Freeport
I have seen boys run barefoot in the leaves
Throwing clubs at the walnut trees
In the yellow-and-gold of autumn,
And there was a brown mash dry on the inside of their hands.
On the Cedar Fork Creek of Knox County
I know how the fingers of late October
Loosen the hazel nuts.
I know the brown eyes of half-open hulls.
I know boys named Lindquist, Swanson, Hildebrand.
I remember their cries when the nuts were ripe.
And some are in machine shops; some are in the navy;
And some are not on payrolls anywhere.
Their mothers are through waiting for them to come home.

Central Park transformed,
a natural stadium
of tourists, strollers,
drunk on:

spring beer Buds,
or
buds of forsythia

maps upside down,
smiles right-side up

Amazing,
they don't even notice,
'walk on by,'

the white shirted, black suited  
unicorn playing the accordion

or the

violinist
imitating Charlie Chaplin,
playing both her instrument and
her hula hoop,
simultaneously

ah Central Park,
your air is like
a first cup of spring,
a first morning coffee,
a fresh breath of
a special new,
if you know
how to
just be,
in NYC

The air, superheated, cocoons us
and we drive,
northwards into the heartland
of the desert.

You, black shirted,
your smooth denims
an intrinsic part
of the landscape.
You were born into dust.

I, crisp and white,
a polarised pair
of mirrors for my eyes.

Your hands on the wheel
guide us into the belly of time.
Intent upon a road with no end.

Sunlight hits chrome,
bleeding flashes of forever
into the gaze of any who glance upon us.

The roof pulled down,
my hat is given up
to a vortex of spinning air,
whipping tiny tornadoes
of grit and long-dead weeds
into a dancing frenzy of celebration.

We have no gold on our fingers.
Our teeth shall not itch
with the sugar of a wedding cake.
And we’ll never look back.

Everyday, A New Person

Stop!** Lest you think,
This is some poem, of a nature serious
I warn you with supercilious contempt
This is a mischance, a contretemps,
This is a dumb poem, like Suntan Lotion^
Inspired by that silliness's Broadway success,
About how everyday, I awake,
A New Person,
With a new designer hair styling

O Yeah, I gotta grip the sink counter,
When I see how my pillow friends^^
Have revenged themselves the night prior,
Upon awakening, I contemplate suicide by pills
But more labor saving for the undertaker I usually choose
Setting One's Hair On Fire

It be awful, it be ridiculous
That my hair defies gravity
Standing straight up,
After a night of lying down,
This is the product of rocking out to the
Hardest of hard rock n' roll.

Now I am a man,
Re hair and grooming I ain't usually
Prioritizing and swooning,
But get this,
It takes a tube daily,
Of alcoholic gel,
To get my pop,
To do the 'lie flat down flop'

When my woman strokes my hair,
She doesn't think I notice,
How she subtle slides her hand down my shirted arm,
To dispose of the newly acquired kitchen grease,
I sometimes, on really bad hair days,
Need to employ to encapture my Grayed Fleece

No faking joke, my mind out strokes
When I look at what handiwork
Has worked me over,
Multi-directional, punk sensational,
I swear it also has changed colors!

No unrequited love, just requited hate
For my torqued, drugged, twisted hairy fate,
Two minutes to write this idiotic ditty,
Ten minutes to nerve to open my eyes to look twice
At what the hairie fairies mischievously hath wrought,
Is unbalanced, demand a recount, a fair fight sought

Soon it will be clear, if you think this poem amusing,
Be in readiness for an Ode to the Haircut upcoming,
Be in readiness for an opera, entitled naturally,
Get Thee To The Barber of First Avenue
As soon as I get the nerve to leave the bedroom.

In midday I watched the children play
on the west side of town
outside my classroom window.
I thought how bright the paper is inside
with blues and limes and how proud
the colors stand within the skin to be
a pioneer for the small and tender.

With the last of the spiders wiped
with pencil textiles I could hear
these tiny howls, a gathering of five boys
throwing around a football remaining invisible
behind thumb greased glass.
Surely children’s beady-eyes bright in hopes
for resulted gutting knees and grass filled mouths
is a life lesson of it’s own.
But, outside is a war and I am watching
against a patchy globe rondure the blur
of a boy beaten down around the ball;
the white lace shinning off
a sunlit fire pit of loss.

It was like watching nerves of growth
as an oceans current; the ripples
carrying them along onto an islands sand.
The red shirted boy holding onto himself,
clenching for breathe while the others like flies
when surrounding the pig; hovering over meat
raw and stiff.

The silence of the air is broken
by the stuttering symphony
of the clash of auto and road.
The once clear sky is whisked
with serene stratus formations.

In the valley of southern mountains
Our hearts clasp at the dream of destination.
A flannel-shirted fellow
sighs in his lullabies,
and hiking boot clad feet
patter at the wisp of his slumber.
Her sunny smile glitters
in spite of the looming,
grey peaks.

Simple joys of friends
and serenity
Paint our spring adventure

"tip-tap, tip-tap"

I keep my head down as walk through the halls
My shoes are ***** I need to clean them, just don't make eye contact

"tip-tap, tip-tap"

I look up quickly before I bump into a blue shirted young girl
I mumble an apology I know she won't hear because I can't manage to actually say it

"tip-tap, tip-tap"

I stumble into the room, bright and inviting, not intimidating
I see the only two faces that'll smile at having seen me today

Probably the only ones who'll notice me

"tip-tap, tip-tap"

I find my seat in the corner next to the fish with the funny name and finally exhale
I can say the first thing I'll say out loud all day

"Hi."

I'm okay. I know I'll be okay.

I saw you fill the park
Tall and grey
Like Gandalf
A book of spells to hand
And cloaked against the rain.

Long strides across grass
Pink shirted king
A circular crown
Shoes trodden down
Waiting for the Wedding to end.

Love Mary for Roger ***

The Beatnik Café’

Cigarettes, coffee, a ****** beret
Blue smoke and Blue Mountain, blue verse, blue rhyme --
O Come to the side-street beatnik café;
Here present-tense yourself; caffeine the time

Here order your Bacon very well Donne
And jam your java with croissants and Keats
Orate from Spenser; groove with Tennyson
Tap out a line of Seafarer-four beats

Tap out a manifesto; everyone does
Pulp-print Red rags yelp “Revolution Now!”
The typewriter is holy, and Up the Fuzz!
Bongo that Kerouac, and Howl, but how?

Bongo that beat, oh, yeah, it’s crazzzzy, man
Sheaffer that rhythm, cat; Parker that line
Ferlinghetti your truth to a yellow pad
Sharpen your verbs to a rebel design

Sharpen your verbs from a bottle of ink
Light up a Camel; blow intellectual smoke
Teach the ****** bourgeois how they should think
Grey-suited capitalists – what a joke!

L’Envoi – Time Slouches On

Tee-shirted capitalists joke in Mandarin
The latest chained coffee’s inside the mall
English and Apples are original sin
On glowing screens where the pale pixels crawl

And no one crawls through rhythm, rhyme, or verse,
Or bongos out an existential cry
For poetry is dead; the twitters terse
Reduce the ancient loves to I, me, my.

Hang the folk-singer in a straight-jacket.
Let him out to entertain the pained,
and to allow him his vanity
of seeing one thousand t-shirted candles
echo back to him, his own face.

Let him board the train to nowhere-town.
Give him time to walk a recovery,
to indulge in a sorrow
that was too often left ignored.
He'll come back with a black eye,
cradle and all.

Kiss your divorce on the mouth, as you
filter his coffee. You're coming out of
your shell, and out of the house,
you're meeting for coffee again,
in the sun-glass shade
of the afternoon.

Hang your clothes out to dry by the river.
Let yourself have a hayfever bout
in the grass. Allow your new freedoms
from the tyrant, that had long kept you
anchored in the past.

It’s just after 5AM but I am up,
Compelled to write and share with you
Bad images
From video and TV.

I gave you a newborn calf being killed by a lion or something.
But there are countless more.
Young seals being swallowed by killer whales.
A young queen bee stabbing its rivals to death before or after they hatch.

An unlucky wildebeest is pushed by a panicked herd
Back into the river
And into the jaws of a crocodile.
Survival of the fittest
Or luckiest.

Animals running about some abattoirs
Trying to escape death.
Fighting for their lives.
Watching their siblings die.
Enter Man.

A groggy man has survived being shot by a firing squad
So a soldier walks up to him
Puts a pistol to his head and fires
So the man falls
Fountains of blood pumping up from his head
To Beatles music.

Rows of orange shirted men kneeling
A hooded man behind each one
With sword ready at the throat…

So many horrors.
No fiction.
I wonder what God thinks….

Paul Butters

The tattoo dame
on the tube train

young
skirted

tee-shirted
and those tattoos

all over her
(least where

you could see)
and the pressed up

people to you
the motion

of the train
bodies colliding

smells
odours

perfume
human sweat

and she swaying
holding a bag

between her legs
and you

wanting to snap her
on your

camera phone
but unable

to get
to your pocket

pressed in
from both sides

trying
to remember her

and the tattoos
and where

they were
and what of

and colours
and such

and she
looking down

not up
and the small ****

pressed in
the small cups.

Iron shirted horsemen loose trotting lackies.
Snarling, snapping curs drive us into the sea.
The cold depths are our sanctuary.

Come dogs! Come!

Swim to us, our throats are bared.
Visions of the masters’ favor
lure them into deeper water.

Come dogs! Come!

Where we can stand, but, you cannot.
Strong hands will hold you beneath the waves.

Angry Templars stand upon the shore.
Plaintive whistling cannot bring back dead dogs.

The Believers are an ocean.

in that gray world
your eyes awoke
to floating lights and fading dreams

on that path of wires
you fell down
your heart a distant glow

memories poured from their eyes
connections in your skies

the smoke arose, exited souls
fluttered past your hands
through the clouds, illumination
blocks connectrix

in that gray world
eyes shirted to-and-fro
teardrops fell and rolled into rain

on that shattered path
you broke down
your heart exists in a land no-more

memories poured from their eyes
dissolving in your skies

the arose, exited souls
fluttered past your heart
through the clouds, illumination
blocks connectrix

- and once again -

the strings arose, connected souls
fluttered to your heart
pierced your skin
stained your mind, and
let it disappear,
let me disappear.

Who do you call when the police murders?
Who do you call when the murderers rule?
Who do you call for justice and protection
in a den of power-hungry fools?

Remember the woman who sold
her body at a checkpoint just to make the bend?
Remember the war veteran who was shot twice unarmed,
even with a mind unable to comprehend?

Remember the young boy who went outside,
only to get killed by four officers, for a crime no one really knew
Remember the countless “casualties”, unfortunate "accidents"
which never really made it through?

Some as young as six
Some as young as two
Some elderly, some misguided delinquents
while some, well, they never do

Dictators and human rights violators
“too old”or “too frail” to be punished
While Jeepney drivers aged 70 and more
take the whole brunt of the "fair" mallet

As thousands pushed into already cramped prison cells
are unable to eat more than once a day
While those rich enough to buy the law
can still throw mañanitas and “meetings” every single day

Yet these blue shirted and barong-laden fools
sometimes come together in TV

to bumble about civil service with mouths still smelling of
beer and of yesterday’s lechon kawali

Because remember, compassion is only
for those who can sit in a palace-worthy chair
Justice is only for the dead or for those
whose pockets are already filled with blood of the bare

And now who's suffering for the lies?
Who’s already taking the blame?
Who will listen to the cries of the forgotten
When our voices are no longer ours to claim?

As their guns point to our heads
with the smiles of “para sa'yo itong serbisyo”
Take off your blindfolds, your change is never coming
Only hell is here, in disguise of a fiasco

The phase is turning grey,
I’m afraid....
Unlike the pink hair
of the woman at the store,
about mid forties, like me.

Only half is pink actually,
the other half shaved smooth.
Earlobes dangle, stretched
like basketball hoops.

Her teenage son tags along,
appearing quite normal.
His rebellious phase
will include heavy doses of church
and young republicans meetings,
screaming “Libtard!” at his mom.

As for me, I still maintain
my long mane,
brown with grey strays now,
hippie on the outside,
misanthrope within,
my outrage at life’s injustice
and people’s greed
still intact, though I lack
a revolutionary spirit
and I despise crowds
so marching in the street
is out, though I applaud
those who do.

I squat here and there,
usually online,
but occasionally
at family gatherings,
leaving steaming piles
of opinion and rage
for white shirted men
in shiny shoes to step in.

At the grassy park
where I sit scribbling,
dogs on leashes
are leaving piles of their own.
The owners walk them
clockwise on a paved loop,
sticking mostly to the path.

I shed sandals,
stroll barefoot in the dewy grass,
my eyes scanning
for squishy land mines,
walking counterclockwise,
a true badass.

Cracked eugenist George Bernard Shaw died before the amputation
of dog-faced Pete Postlethwaite's cancer-tumor stricken ******* ball

Coifs of lightning disentangle
under a black cloud lattice.

Thunder rustles to rude growl,
bracelets of leaf are trembling.

We're eastbound, hundreds of us
on this loosened buckle

of corrugated silver flash.
The rain attacks the window

in excoriating scrawls
slivering down into a sluice.

Red-shirted woman, run now,
over the yawning pool

that shivers with addition.
Blue-breasted runner, fly,

fly into clay-colored false dusk
that heaves with humid breath.

Escape from this wet hunger
that walks over us so indifferently.

We stumble nightward. Rain laces
our eyes shut. We're alone here.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­     A Non-Religious Jew

                  “Well, he may be a good man but he’s certainly not
                    Christian. Zelensky is the first Jewish president of
                    Ukraine, even if he is non-religious...”

                                    -The Remnant, 2 March 2022

He stands in rubbled streets during bomb attacks
And takes a selfie to show us he’s alive
Our tee-shirted leader of the free world
He stands among the wreckage and reassures us

He stands in rubbled streets; he needs a shave
He needs some sleep; he does not need a ride
But The Remnant - O infallible Remnant! –
Dismisses him as just a Jew

If only we were all that Jewish
If only we were all that non-religious

A mother's right to contract the ****** of her unborn infant shall no be infringed. [9 bullets in my 1957 revolver means nine head-shots...] Why do flannel-shirted ***** and negroids in floral underpants enjoy preferential treatment from hot- dog vendors? All hail a world swayed by plasticized, estrogen mimickers! Let's pile onto the stinking bus! It'll be a blast! People are forced into ***** buses because their licenses to drive have been revoked. Everybody wants a car to tip over.

Add tennis shoes. Saturate with diesel fuel and light. Bring on the *****, whipped cream & marshmallows! The Constitution of the United States, Amendment 2A : A mother's right to contract the ****** of her unborn infant shall no be infringed. [9 bullets in my 1957 revolver means nine head-shots...] Why do flannel-shirted ***** and negroids in floral underpants enjoy preferential treatment from hot- dog vendors? All hail a world swayed by plasticized, estrogen mimickers! Let's pile onto the stinking bus! It'll be a blast! People are forced into ***** buses because their licenses to drive have been revoked. Everybody wants a car to tip over.