A contemporary effort on Allen Ginsberg's Howl.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by depression,
helpless self-affliction, generic retroaction,
Who don’t know whether god is real and if he is does, does he have money for weed
or time to bum a smoke,
Who question their own mortality on internet search engines because there just isn’t enough time
in the day to tell a real person what’s going on upstairs, and who the fuck is Siri pretending
to be anyway,
Who chain smoke cigarettes behind campus dumpsters and hope their boyfriend can’t smell it
through the Paris perfume,
Who sit in dark rooms writing poetry for someone they haven’t met outside of a dream,
Who hope beyond hope with tear after tear that the person laying quietly beside them is actually going
to be the one this time,
Who stare into the geometric void in their pockets and hit “Share” because it takes their minds off the
bottle of god-knows-which pill that does who-knows-what,
Who drink bottom shelf and wake up upside down but somehow make it to the nine-to-five on time,
Who try and fail to beat their high scores every day after class until there just isn’t a class to go to,
Who stay fast, act quick, run! run! run! the running of the wind! the sailing of the iron ships! the running
of the bulls! the half marathon inside their heads that not even a double dose of anything can
quiet down anymore,
Who at the start were so full of potential in Daddy’s eye but just can’t seem to figure out their shit
long enough to write a goddamn essay,
Who read literature and learn myth and sing plays and fail the Bar, but this time on purpose because
nothing matters anymore; because the world is ending; because Y2K, baby, and the great
misdirect, the silent circus of a silver lining just waiting to break through the black clouds,
Who try and fail in nobody’s eyes but their own and the mental dysmorphia,
Who give in to natural instinct but can’t sleep a wink from fear of rearing young,
Who behave rationally and think normally and speak intelligently but all the while asking
what in the world she’s doing right now and why it isn’t with them,
Who can’t sleep without aid,
Who can’t sleep without substance,
Who can’t sleep without getting off,
Who can’t sleep without catching the end of a rerun seen a hundred times,
Who can’t sleep without him, or her, or the soft whispering of mom’s voice back home,
saying everything will work out in the end, I promise, she says, but does she mean it? and how
could she know anyway,
Who just can’t sleep, man!
Who pretend to be connoisseurs; masters of their fields, intellectuals and free-thinkers and politicians
and whatever else is trending on Instagram, but don’t have a clue who fought for the American
dream except that black lives matter too, dontcha know,
Who vote for whoever happens to be running for the blue party this term because the other candidate
hates the brown kid down the block and nobody really likes old people anyway, but the election
is rigged, the illuminati! and false-flagged socialism,
Who go to college and drop out of college and study abroad for college and why does college mean she
has to be a light year away,
Who cross oceans just to see the wind blow,
Who think their problems are any different from those that came before us, who created us, who paved
way to us, who built cities and empires and erected concrete vastness and men-shuttling, space-
wandering vessels, but how dare they ever think they were young once and have a clue
of what it’s like to be young in a lower middle-class society,
Who can’t help but sigh,
Who can’t help but cry silently when nobody is around because the ideal masculine image won’t allow
any form of weakness,
Who get off without sound because the feminine ideology doesn’t allow for promiscuous
behavior,
Who forget what it’s like to fall in love because searching for it online is so much easier,
and convenient, effortless, and trying to be personal means leaving the house,
Who still can’t sleep at what-time-does-the-neighbor-get-up-for-work, the alarm clock playing soft jazz
along the early horizon sun, people still listen to jazz? where’s the drop, bro? and the wife
leaves too, but not until the husband is good and gone and a second man pulls up the drive,
Who buy soft-core drugs from their managers and just hope the random drug test isn’t scheduled for
today,
Who look at their infant daughter and wonder why their book was never published; why the band never
took off; why the gang stopped asking them to hang out and just get a fucking beer even once
a month will do, I just miss you, man,
Who cut themselves just to see if that’s what’s finally going to take away the pain from in their heads,
Who run on endless wheels and drink from clicking water bottles suspended from wire cages and try to
remind themselves why they hate the new health care plan,
Who work double overtime and split shifts just to pay the bills but can’t figure out why the rent went up
again, why the mortgage isn’t decreasing, why so many damned deductions came out of a
bi-weekly paycheck for a drop-out flipping burgers without a GED in pocket,
Who take drugs to try to get on the bus but just can’t seem to relate to Huxley or Kesey,
Who can’t understand Freud,
Who think Darwinism is ironic and named their bong after one of Dumas’ children,
Who wonder why they were disowned by the family, gay IS the way! and hey, at least its legal.