I Visionary Those long dead lips speak still tortured wisdom to my poisoned ears I hear you Allen Ginsberg, and the seeds of my generation have been sewn in fields of poppies and destruction And reaped by mindrapists and puppetmasters I have seen these dormant brilliances burn their own ideas Set a blaze to ingenuity and smoke talent tea for breakfast They, who fought to play music during music class logic warriors against the paradox of closed education for an open world Who laughed aloud at the misgivings of the shuddering absentminded professor Who tried to run away from home early in childhood to be found sleeping under bushes by badgood mothers The eyes wide with awe at intelligence The respect The pity The stupidity The superficial bullshit The soft dead warm smell of cigarette smoke in their clothes comforting familiar as you lean toward them and try not to linger too long They who knew all too well the interior walls of dressed up asylum walls helpthemwalls betterwalls teardownwalls Who lost their senses in car seats and lamented loneliness It’s not medicine it’s poison It’s poisonnnnnnn Who walked naked with their parents and their parents and their parents through pastures of blasphemy and apathy and pride Who stood on rooftops and leaned their ears to the cries of war pitted empathy against aloofness and let loose their screams of cynicism sentiment on the porcelain world below Who listened attentively to declarations of idolatry over untouched hashbrowns on Hallowe’en, Who glutted themselves on vodka and 7-up in the corner booth at a waffle house and burned cigarette paper in plastic waterfalls Who smashed the idols of their generation and made iconoclast the fashion Who stayed awake all night painting twisted images mottled intriguing, landscapes of their own minds And singing and shouting and crying humanity and smoke and crying and crying and crying and the same tragedies of their fathers’ fathers tearing their days and nights Who lit their rooms with candles and blew them out from bed And who related this all like kings over mead over coffee at 1 A.M. Who lay in beds reeking of their own sweat and secretions and coughed up mountains of oblivion and years of sunsets Whose beautiful glistening bodies shone in the sun and the moon and the rain and the sleet and shivered beneath the winds of insecurity naked to the elements Who threw themselves into the eyes of hurricanes and swore that they were safe Who stepped bravely proudly innocently over the boundaries of society Love yourself Love your neighbour Love your mother but don’t wear her clothes And don’t ever find a partner who can use the same bathroom as you I have seen them dying inside They who understood perfectly the consequences of their folly and never cared Whose minds were the smothering playgrounds for genius swinging and sliding and teetering tottering climbing the jungle-gym twirls and mad swirls and mad whorls of consciousness and falling at midnight in a drunken stupor to the ground Who wrenched democracy out of the hands of the illintentioned masses and knew inherently that they were the kings of the kings of the world Who were told to throw down their paintbrushes pens and pianos in favour of paperclips and permit parking and pension plans Oh, godless idol, deceptive “Ambition” whose feet are stained with the blood and sweat and rotten bile of a thousand senseless dreams too sensible to allow to survive, I have seen them kill themselves mentally for a momentary lapse of reason. II Scream! Every movement, every moment, every word, every action, every thought a scream!(?) Scream to the earth! To the mothers! To the fathers! To the jailers! To the lovers! Scream! To the judges! The teachers! The brothers and sisters! To the doctors! The lawyers! To the dead and the dying! To the pits of hell! To the priests! To the rabbis! To the baptists! To the catholics! To the hindus and muslims! To the christians! The atheists! The evolutionists! The agnostics! To Christ! To Lucifer! To God! To Man! To Buddha and Baphomet, Memnoch and Moloch and Baal and Ba and Ka St. Stephen! To USA! To War and Peace! Crime and punishment! To grapes of wrath! To racial harmony! To politicians! To the democrats! To the republicans! To the libertarians! To apple pie bureaucracy! To the president! To the homeless! To poets! To drugs! To needles! To reading! To fucking! To aging! To building! To progress! To teen angels! To grownup idols! To sex! To bleeding! To birth! To death! To SCREAM! To every daemon that haunted young minds and every institution that ignored their passage. Scream! And loud... and long... and scream like every generation before (us) them... in a myopic vacuum. III And their eyes screamed, Deep, cynical, penetrating, restless, green eyes alive with laughter and dead with insecurity, Eyes that burned holes into the soul, Sexual, sensual, critical, incisive, too old eyes betraying the vitality of the soul that illuminated them, Eyes, red without being red, that must have hotlines to heaven and hell and purgatory alike Screamed, And pure, ocean, innocent yet impure, empathetic hazel eyes, nectar and ambrosia eyes, Floating lost in the nebula clouds of existence, drifting from one perfection to another, Endearing, respecting, adoring, ignoring, gentle, free eyes, eyes that make you cry just to look at them, Lost childhood eyes, Screamed, And calm eyes, thrown almost without reason into a mad scientist enigma of self, Unclouded by the infinite wonders behind them, Suddenly alighting at the most infinitesimal sign of beauty, Wide with wonder, childlike amazement, reverent, wise, comforting eyes, Eyes that always looked at you when you spoke, steady eyes, Screamed, Screamed, Blue eyes and brown and green and red and yellow and white and cat eyes Peering helplessly out of lonely faces, clueless, deep, wide, narrow, trembling, Brave and fearless, dashing headfirst into the trials of the world, Screamed, And their hands screamed, Artist hands, Spindly, spider, magnetic hands, Tangible masses of bone and blood and muscle, somehow crafted to depraved attraction, Long white fingered hands, knobbed yet not knobby hands, purposeful hands, Capable of creating all matter of lovely and detestable visions, Child’s hands, Folded inward hands reaching out, Fingers clenched in angry fists hands, Screamed, And beautiful hands, Undeniably male, soft and cautious, Magnanimous hands, benevolent hands, embraceable hands, Fathers’ hands, Sweet, yet poised to strike at any enemy to themselves and their own, Protective, modest, open, accepting, wistful hands, dangerous hands, Screamed, And strong hands, Hands that showed every physical labour that had befallen them, and looked not tired but dignified, Music hands, guitar-picking hands, hands grasping for any vessel by which to express their original master, Grandfathers’ hands, Hands that exuded more years of experience than the body allowed, Yet retained that rare innocence of children, Screamed, They balanced precariously between heaven and earth, beautiful, delicate compromise between wild passion and burning out, But sometimes the world was too much for them, Or they were too much for the world, And the madness took over, or the loneliness, or the helplessness, or the drugs, or the sex, or the confusion, over the edge, And the eyes clouded, And the eyes dimmed, And the eyes were divorced from the body -- oblivion, And the hands shook, And the hands wandered, And the hands lost connection with the creative spirit, Freedom? And the soul lost its drive and the senses were dulled and the photo album memory shed a few pages, And they imprisoned themselves in the act of escape, And the world left them there in its bowels and gutters, Forgotten, Forgotten, Forgotten? And even as they (you) they laughed themselves out of awareness, I cried for them, And I cry for them, And their madness is my madness, And their tears stain my face, Not from selflessness, but greed and want of their beauty before me, And their loneliness wrenches my heart, And their highs make me fly, And I hurt for their entrapment, And when the needles of humanity pierce their hopes, they pierce mine, and they pierce hers and his and everyone’s, And when they destroy themselves with reckless abandon and carelessness and insanity, They destroy me.
Take me home right now or I'm calling my mother.
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