Because the Beat Generation has Changed

I.
who began their days with their feet to the fire and lept to the skies without anything but their shirts and their jeans
who left the morning light in favor of the bright fluorescent scathing rabies of ceiling tile torture
that left their skin molting like little caverns and cages
who stuck out their chest, emaciated and prolonged, only to beat the breath from their lungs and be so
goddamned proud that their children were going to be less emaciated and perhaps even one day find their stupid little trinkets and give them up to charity
who deftly defied the 9 to 5 when they really worked the 6 to 10 and only after the humdrum blue glow of that soul-devouring seraphim tripped a circuit breaker did they finally pour themselves a drop of scotch to stave off the hunger
who let themselves stay hungry so that others could eat, never realizing that if they dried up and withered the fruit they bore wouldn’t be as sweet,
who toiled their fingers and twirled their tongues and held signs and crashed cars
the seedlings taller than their memories but their tin roofs rusted and dripping, leaves spreading their wilt to the ground and tainting the soil

II.
he has come and fled the great halls in a fit of fire and rage and has left only the charred remnants of his robes down the corridor and into the night,
salivating and salacious, they turned their ruby-eyes to the promise of wealth! To which the old gods are dead and rotting
as if their flesh was skin and not the flesh of their purgatoried torsos. Would that they were! perhaps their shuttered twits and face-leger pleas would appease a flesh and blood.
To sit and twiddle idlewild, what it is to dream the dream of the dreamers,
mocking the fantasy with less than human emotion because emotion is weakness
while their robes burn leading fire
“down to the river. Into the street!”

-JR Simmang
with a special thanks to Allen Ginsberg