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I have seen the tortured minds of my generation rise out of the ashes of insanity naked in new birth
born of one-night stands to fathers angry at street-level poverty looking for another damned fix
segregated from their heavenly connections by pulpit charlatans who mock Jesus with their lies
and foisted into a society rife with the embryonic anticipation of a litter of wide-eyed howling wolves—
they howl, wail in the pain of a toe-stubbed mind numb with the violent anguish of reverse Kaddish
corrupted thoughts that go down to dark black hell inside the earth's churning stomach grueling
through another day of grinding fingers to stubs in stealthy hot steel mills of melting coke slag dross
or the tragic lost-in-limbo, non-racist clans that emerge from dust-filled caverns wearing black-face daily
rewarded for years of long lust labor with death by black lung just for trying to feed a frightened family:
unconscionable insanities pregnant with silent rage birthed a booming generation of undying phoenix
to sort out the mess of the death of a blitzkrieg of rotating swastikas grinding over the im-Maginot line
and the octopus strike of a rising sun's rays dropping torpedoes out of the sky all over a pacifist ocean
anything but, revolving around one tiny island midway in the salty sea, a turning point of carrier death
delivering a scarred, walled, divided, dark cold war world (in a race against time) into our riled hands:
these are the fathers that beat the living shit out of us so that we would make something of ourselves
their thick black leather belts swishing through thin air to connect with naked ass anxiety that wailed
as mothers cowered in corners in this machismo pig-dominated world of sixties flower-child retribution
yes, wailed for an opportunity to prove that their empty mirror looks were not just reality sandwiches
to be left at the gates of wrath over the death and fame of the unborn, but these best minds would rise,
rise from sad dust glories into bold new consciousness aware of the fall of America to entitled bastards
leaving seventies hallucinogenic mind breaths of yage letters and peyote epistles deep in Indian journals
for an eighties explosion of technology sending out a web of cosmopolitan greetings—a plutonian ode
in deliberate prose detailing the new nineties code—a cyber matrix of electronic virtual opportunity
beyond the Y2K wherewithal of wonder-gurus poised to exploit the capital gain of worldwide attribution
delivered by indies in iron horses to the doorsteps of the consummated—prime Amazon jungle packages,
all psychedelics notwithstanding this onslaught of otherworldly "a to z" distribution of new globalism
printed in a bound book of martyrdom and artifice pursued by terrorific faithful forgers of explosions,
nine-eleven sensibilities notwithstanding: in the twenty-tens first blues then reds separated purples
reaching beyond yellow viruses soaked in white lies with their twenty-twenty smiles hidden from view
behind false-face shields of safety and protection for the sake of mass control litigation mitigating
the best minds silenced by the verbatim lectures and pinocchio talking points of the illuminated ones
who all know what's best for planet earth, just read the planet news and don't ask questions because
politicians are the most forthright and honest people alive and would never steer us wrong, right, yeah
and here's some land on the moon you can develop when you take your Musk journey into space to rise—
rise from the ashes of insanity naked in new birth, put on a white shroud, escape the doom of this world
to a new cosmic citizenship far away and beyond this reality into a place called eternity where lies die,
death dies, hate dies, and "evil" is reversed so we can "live" free and not die a sliced snake's fiery death—
do you believe it—the best minds gathered to think, to reminisce, to tell tall tales of the former ways
and days of insanity, laughing unrelentingly over some heavenly cognac to relax at the end of woes.
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This poem, Wail, is written in a style that, in part, imitates Ginsberg's style in many of his poems, but especially his style in Part I of Howl (click here to read it), his most famous poem.
Ginsberg’s style in Howl includes very long lines that wrapped around to the next line. The hanging indents indicate continuation of the line above. Same with my poem, it is written in long lines. If any of the lines are wrapping around on your display, just realize that the second shorter line is the continuation of the first longer line for each line. These shorter lines are really a continuation of the line above so that the poem is technically only 39 lines. I wish there was a better way to do it, but I think you can figure it out.
In tribute to Allen's life and work, this poem also utilizes key words and phrases from all his book titles as a way to honor him and integrate his life's works into the bowels of the tribute poem.
Here are the key words and phrases from the titles of his books, see if you can find them in my poem:
Howl
Kaddish
Empty Mirror
Reality Sandwiches
The Yage Letters
Planet News
Indian Journals
The Gates of Wrath
Iron Horse
The Fall of America
Verbatim Lectures
Consciousness
First Blues
Sad Dust Glories
Mind Breaths
Plutonian Ode
White Shroud
Cosmopolitan Greetings
Illuminated
Death and Fame
Deliberate Prose
The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice
The Best Minds
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