HOWL for the 21st Century

I did it!
Three years of pecking away at countless drafts and revisions plus the last manic 48 hours but I think I am finally done my epic revisioning of Ginsberg's Howl. Which funnily enough I didn't really think too highly of until a few months ago, I respected the work for it's place in the evolution of the counter-culture, but felt it to be really self-involved and irrelevant. I have always favoured Lawrence Ferlinghetti of all the beat poets and he was never really part of the inner sanctum of hip cats like Kerouac and Cassidy. I started writing this piece not because of a great love of it's style and rhythm, that came later, but because I felt a urgent need to communicate the images that fill my thoughts. To try to make others feel the same tightening of the skin at their own priveledge and recognition of our mutual validity and insignificance, and to maybe ignite an answering response. I have been very hesitant about publishing or submitting any of my writing and one of my promises to myself has been to work through my fear of succeeding in anything I do for myself (I have no self-conciousness about dedicating myself to the projects or needs of others) so I decided last year to complete this piece in order to submit it to the Malahat Reviews bi-annual long poem prize. They may or may not be the right publisher but I just wanted to pick an achievable goal. Then I totally forgot about it, what with moving to utopia and all, after all the painting was done and the majority of my chicken scratchings unpacked it was already December. I have been trying to grab enough time every day to work on it but yesterday I was sure that I would never be done and decided to just foret about it. Some little stubborn part of me kicked me in the ass and said not this time dammit! I did have to send Chris to the postoffice at 4:30 to get them to weigh and postmark the envelope but I printed the final copy at 5:30. I share it with you here although it is a bit overwhelming inside this little box I prefer it in hard copy. It's too late to make any suggested revisions to this particular submission but I want to hear them all the same.

HOWL
For The Twenty-First Century

Oh for a falconer’s voice that I could tear the cave where echo lies and make hoarse her voice with repetition of a single word:
ARISE!
I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by disinterest,
senseless arrogant naked,
stumbling blindly through the angry spasms of a decaying culture hiding amidst the debris,
homogenous cartoons being all-they-can be in crew cuts and blue jeans an army of one united against creation man-made an island unto himself
vacant eyes boring holes in the great television screen of Time,
who die and fuck and laugh and bleed under the same mutable sky denying any connection to the vast conspiracy of life,
who angry in their solitude grow sick and twisted and bonsai-souled fruit of life withering sere on the vine before even being tasted or savored leaving empty husks whose only purpose is consumption,
who prowling back alleys, narrow eyed brass knuckle sharksters, sniffing after fear and sex and power by any means ,
who eyes closed to mystery still the rushing pulse of joy before it quickens subsuming vitality into data and binary code prostrate beneath the idol of technology subservient to the whirring clicking machines,
who moth-like race towards the suttee fires of industry to be consumed by the incendiary force no lazarus reborn phoenix in the ashes of transgression youth’s bright possibility only fuel for the corporate crematory pyre,
who tarred and feathered and bereft of dignity stand hogtied before the firing squad of progress and do not struggle,
who swallow the wild untamable barbaric yawp straining for release to echo over rooftops of the world in jubilant noise, a sursum corda, great cry of hope moving us all to our knees,
with indifference, without reverence, with AK47’s and dogma and false communion,
insensibly right; streets cower naked under regimental footsteps pounding merciless drummings of war setting earths bones a-vibrating from Canada to Iraq, threatening all the precious humanity between,
savage parodies of lives, oblivious to the setting of the day, mad reeling through ghost towns of the soul, wrapping dreams in star-striped finery auctioned to eBay’s highest bidder, sky and sea and earth reviled by the snake-blood rulers of our century of discontent,
who soulless deprived of solace mental landscapes bare and bleeding fall headlong into darkness with nothing to break their fall,
who tumble like Alice through curiouser confusion into psychedelic fractals of amanita gut-rot and peyote dreaming, melting puddles of de-boned youth ecstatic, tongues sweet with serotonin and methamphetamine buzz, careening down k-holes after the white rabbit of dissolution,
who cowering with tails of purpose between legs of self-hate lunge at the pinching grabbing hands that taunt them wounding all in the path of retribution,
lost regiment of fear-soaked petty tyrants conspiring in pentagon and penthouse to become Masters of War rolling loaded dice in the ultimate game of LIFE,
chitchatting doublespeak bullshit speechifying euphemism and misdirection and terror and patriotism and shock and awe and division and war
whole existences destroyed in complete indifference for human individuality or grace with atomic weapons aimed at the pearly gates of Heaven truth spurting oily blood in sacred Babylon,
who reaching for solace in needle or cock meet the unsmiling mortician beneath malignant orange skies from East Hastings to South Africa no mortal enemy to face with courage and steel this silent microscopic battle occurs beneath the skin,
suffering cold sweats and lipoatrophy and tumorous Kaposi sarcoma cultural pariahs exiled lepers from the bigoted homelands that made them,
who disappear in tenement districts into dirty predawn twilight
without trace or inquiry found years later in pig farm refuse
women’s bodies just supermarket meat and front page sensationalism covering backtracks of incompetent police lost in the jackal feeding of media vultures life stories dropped on the cutting room floor slipping through the cracked pavement of the dumping ground,
who stagger reeking of piss and sorrow bathed in neon and regret
lucidity a tide that never reaches shore wishes stuffed into paper-bag
bottle hearts tossed into the violent sea,
who at night after clocking from cant-see to cant-see transform to bits and bytes tiptappiting their hopes into a blankness of screen words colliding in silence alone but for the pulsating light,
who swallowing the white-coat’s placebo smooth over truth with pharmaceutical veneer lugging children like reluctant baggage from swim meet to practice while a while beast paces and gnaws at rib bones
desperate for egress,
who soul-bound lie weeping defeated in Oppression’s basement morality strung up on a plastic crucifix of shame,
who toil in vacuous futility for a faceless master who has no name and so cannot be defeated,
who couple in back alleys and seedy hotels and backseats on broken dreams and creaky mattresses love a greasy stain between the thighs of innocence,
who denied access to the Almighty Institution dull bright passions to rusty muttering acne faced flipping burgers dreaming of guns,
who malice ridden creep through virulent streets of barrio and ghetto hearts yearning for relief just one kind word or soft shoulder,
who perched on their plastic lifeboat thrones of stolen lives peer down at the teeming mass of limbs and outstretched hands and solemnly toast progress,
who pass through grades and tests and ratings without absorbing one iota of illumination paper thoughts cluttering mind-rooms with dusty academia and jargon,
who shiver beneath newspaper blankets in soggy refrigerator boxes watching a stream of indifferent boot-soles flash by unseen by whole cities of averted eyes,
who nine inch heeled parade in violent hues on city streets misery painted loud on faces made beautiful with wear bathed red in Moloch’s light,
who cram their internal rolodex with dogma and rhetoric leaving no room for questioning of self locking conscience away in Pandora’s box of denial,
who cannot hear the voice of creation calling their names for the ever-present tinny muttering ipods and cell phones and babbling prime time tv surfing inanities while community rots at the seams,
who view every particle as a tool to be used as a means to an end to avoid their own insignificance screaming ‘look at me! look at me!’ while they cut and splice life into a nightmarish freak show of spoat giders and pigoons ,
who cry out alone in the night over glossy magazines spilling lust into aching palms falling unsatisfied into dreams of sadness and humiliation,
who black and blue and battered manufacture excuses swallow the bitten-tongue penny taste praising the very hands that beat them down,
who corrode their unstable existence with ignorance turning a blind eye to redemption of spirit or pursuit of any but the basest pleasures,
who gather in maquiladoran finery to bemoan the state of the world over slave trade café au laits tossing recycled paper cups in the overflowing gutter of mediocre intentions,
who riddled with toxins line up in droves to swallow whatever cocktail purported to cure them lapping up the very poisons that make them ill,
who leap from the twin towers of fierce irony armed with the conviction of avenging seraphim kneeling in the War President’s temple of Mammon,
who top filled to overflowing with discontent savage dark cities in white hoods and righteousness herding the other towards the lynching tree,
whose sordid lives push them beyond recall tomorrow and tomorrow ceasing to creep spilling vitality into bathtubs, splattered against walls, strung up in trees, tossed from overpasses, gassed in vehicles, drowned in water, bottle, syringe, hope gone and lost forever down the drain,
who deafen themselves to the singing of their own souls drowning out the pure voices within beneath the dull thudding of techno grinding in sweat drenched frenzy to a litany of “I’m a slave for you hit me baby one more time” intoned by saccharine-coated barelegged schoolgirl coquettes with insipid doe-eyes, victims of old men’s lust,
who righteous with justified indignation purge their hate in a world war intifada, pitting brother against sister, sister against brother, streets awash with crimson and shame,
who engage in a ruthless jihad against all that is holy plundering our sacred hopes and fouling the connection linking our whole human community enshrouding us in nuclear clouds,
who wasteful squander tender kisses damp spring mornings joyful redemptive frolicking in the grass love a communion bringing two closer to god in furtive slip-slappings against flesh testament polluted with the sin of unconcern,
who trench-coat and tattered seek truth in darkness sighting fate through the barrel of their fathers transgressions hatred a bullet speeding down through the years to rob each other in schools and streets and homes of that which is not theirs to own,
who live in pawn to bits of coloured paper stuffing wallets with dead tree matter hoarding pulp and illusory digits while the debit accounts of the heart are writ in red as they charge it, buy, and expire,
who impoverished of spirit heart-worn and weary crawl inside to bury their dreams in the sand of regret secure in privilege bought at the cost of the earth’s diversity,
who sacrifice youth’s vibrant heart to the altar of War pulling it still beating from empty chests crusading not for freedom or liberty, truth or harmony, racing instead towards the final apathy of the grave,
who close their ears to the grieving cry of the mother her anguish the raw wound of a clear-cut rotting fish spawning in dirty streams the forest a grave where the bodies of children lay,
who cut and nip and tuck each unruly hair or thought masking the pungency of the moon’s tugging with ammoniac douche sucking up Eve’s bloody libation with plastic tubes and vacuums birthing new life in sterile cots through scheduled incision breasts denied mammal function suckling babes on latex and corn sugar refusing any honest touch,
who eyes downcast refuse to raise their face to the sun’s redemptive gaze scrabbling coakroachesque through the sordid underbelly of the beast,
who wretched in their isolation cannot see the grace in simply breathing and loving and fucking and dying just living on this imperfect hallowed land
who strip and rape and mine nature’s curves trading sacred flesh in the name of progress bankrupting future legacies to boost the GDP,
who in defiance toss flaming cocktails through the windows of sanctuary craving solace in violence burning heart homes to foundation leaving ruins and desecration running from the wreckage as discordance swells,
who capture the barefoot gamine of imagination binding their weeping muses to the grinding numbness of the assembly line originality lost to the gears of industry,
who cannot see that nothing is left here but useless sentiment as proof of the passing of time pathetic monuments to glory crumble before eternity, only creation remains,
who live out their days in purgatory oblivious to the daily rebirth of dawn only to find when breath ends that heaven was left with skin and bone now endless night awaits,
who rising in Montreal, Rome, Paris, Washington D.C with indignation flaring in their aching chests were sent home gassed and tearful to vent frustration with joysticks and vandalism the clamor for justice silenced bought like New York for a handful of beads and shiny things,
who airbrushed glossy flash pearly white incisors broadcasting live from the wreckage stacking up headlines like corpses to a soundtrack of buzzing flies and the mournful keening of carrion birds,
who speaking in tongues prophesize unheard to padded rooms calmed with straitjacket and electroshock for the better good and public safety of the status quo picket fence elite who do not know that “the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die alone in an armed madhouse ”,
and who sick with a sense of wrongness a drowning panic that life is slipping by unnoticed an impending feeling of falling sky are quickly diagnosed chemically lobotomized then returned to the milling herd,
who in final protest explode transformed into fiery dynamos made one with the enemy in anarchic mortal embrace graffitiing macabre collages of fabric and limbs on ancient walls eulogized by a droning murmur of the holy from tomb to unmarked grave all a-sighing for peace,
Operation Iraqi Liberation and Washington’s blood soaked centre, the Homeland is not secure, the people hide beneath terror’s red flag, dreams like halls of doors to which they have no key and cannot enter, chomping patriot toast while freedom fries,
with Madre Tierra firmly pissed off, and shit hitting the metaphorical fan, and National Guard killing citizens in the city that care forgot and the entire world stripped down to its patched underwear, a hollow shell that once cradled fullness, only a tiny crumb left and that little bit tenuous, nothing remaining but factories and parking lots,
oh Children! while life is not safe you are not safe, and now we are running holus bolus to the precipice of chaos,
and who reading these leaves by the light of flickering hearts scream eureka awakening from generations of cursed slumber coughing up the last chunk of poisoned apple,
who recognizing their sacred destiny shrug off the dusty mantle of complicity to stand stripped clean of pretense made humble and sacred before the vastness of creation to reclaim the pure joy of being humane,
cleansing history’s bloody legacy, planting seeds together in the fertile ground,
the lowly whore and the cultured saint seeing one altar and a pantheon of deities, only now understood and equal, both reflections of divinity, grace manifest in each vibrating cell,
with a word of boundless understanding torn from depths of shared experience, loud voices rusty with misuse ring out in a relentless howling for peace,

II

what paradox of chaos and destiny conspired to abandon us here in darkness our bright human potential burning in the fires of modernity?
America! Brutal! Vicious! Intolerant! America! Oil and nuclear bombs! Children dying for profit! Boys trading flesh for shoes! A world lost to America!
America! America! God bless America! America the worthy!
Global America! America the eternally free!
America the Eden of Righteousness!
America whose towering skyscraper of freedom
raises her beacon of light to lift man from darkness!
America fortress of fear and paranoia in which I wander under golden arches
losing time and losing night!
America whose parking lots extend in all directions!
America whose manicured lawns mark the grave of a pristine wilderness!
America whose eyes see all! America the righteous New World Order!
America who spreads her fertile thighs to the johns of capitalism and trades her bounty for garbage!
America you killer of innocence! Desert of prosperity!
America victorious conqueror of nations whose emptiness is a
plague of locusts!
America whose voice is the desperate wailing of mothers holding the mangled bodies of their children to condemning skies in reproach!
America whose colossal arrogance dictates even to God, the Son and the Holy Ghost!
America who is not confined by the dictates of good taste and flaunts her professionally sculpted liposuctioned ass for all to see!
America who abandons her own children to the vagaries of destruction succoring only those whose skin abhors the sun!
America whose fields are stained with centuries of lives wasted
blood and poison fertilizing crops leaving them bitter with regret!
America whose citizens starve on Wonder and plastic cheese
bellies crying out for a taste of reality, one quick sip from the well of freedom!
America whose land trembles like a soft skinned virgin with her face towards the wall while her father commits unspeakable atrocities beneath the covers of democracy!
America whose bombs laying waste to the fertile delta from which we all came razing the birthplace of Saviors to rubble and bones!
America your rivers run grey with offal and unnatural fish hide deformities in shame and terror where silent river and deep water sentinels once reigned for thousands of years!
America whose bountiful sunlight goes unused, only nuclear fission for our monolith of power, just because we can!
America whose right to tools of hate supercedes a planet’s right to life!
America whose hope for redemption lies dying in the streets of Iraq while smoke billows in toxic clouds of uranium dust torn from the sacred lands of America’s first people!
America where beneath the surface even the worms shake in fear!
America you purveyor of death and delusion! Betrayer of hopes! Eater of dreams!
Integrity! Justice! Truth! Beauty! Freedom! Love! Happiness! Lost in America! Sold in America! Dead in America! Slaves to America!
America whose profits pile up like bodies into a reeking empire of paper!
Cancerous America whose malignancy cannot be excised!
America whose jails overflow with sadness and whose streets overflow with refuse! America whose cities sag beneath a blanket of plastic and despair! America whose endless death rattle will not shut up! Victims of America resist! Rebel! Unite!

III

America! I’m with you in the new millennium facing a world gone mad in your image,
I’m with you in Palestine where you spit in the faces of prophets Jesus, Muhammad and Abraham weeping for the forsaken,
I’m with you in the devastated motherland where earth begs for freedom from terror,
I’m with you in the depths of your sorrow when skeletons of feeling dance through moldy basement windows rebounding off of walls that were never silent, only unheard.
I’m with you in your computers following the scent of your aliveness through tangled webs of dreams and wire,
I’m with you in the eyes of the abused seeing each transgression or compromise of soul, weakened with every loss from son to seed,
I’m with you in children of all diversity’s hues restless flames of life’s longing, whosoever debases you condemns us all,
I’m with you in dignity from Guatanamo Bay to the lower eastside, we have struggled so long we must be free,
I’m with you in the brothers and sons of Year King’s sacrifice hands linked with sisters taking back the night shame at last defeated with honest laughter,
I’m with you in all reflections of the mother wombs tying blood to moon and tide, rebirth was granted into your keeping, guardians of life,
I’m with you in the stories of the Elders keepers of context and experience grandchildren take your rightful place at their feet,
I’m with you in the words of the fearless Sojourner’s for truth, progeny of 3,000 years of downpression, spirits unchained hands raised in liberty,
I’m with you in the moment of your awakening the hour that the ship comes in knuckling the wool from now open eyes,
I’m with you in Middle America, tossing possessions aside, walking fearless and unencumbered back to Eden’s wild sanctuary, the promise of the New World.
I’m with you in the rebirth of the sacred following ancient roots back to the first amoebic divide,
I’m with you in youth of Aquarius wolves disguised as black sheep among the flock release your voice joy is yours for the taking! go rushing pell-mell into the eye of the storm, manifest the very truth they seek to deny,
I’m with you in the Brownian chaos of ages revolving pin tip angels dancing all existence yours and mine, into dust, into stars
I’m with you in nomads land out beyond the edge of the world here there be dragons and mystery where Hope’s butterfly wings let loose a mighty tempest,
I’m with you in this place of harmony where the howling of all my relations beats a path to my open door, I have been waiting for you. Come inside.

Glossary

Intifada: in·ti·fa·da n, the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that started in 1987 in protest against the continued Israeli occupation

Jihad : ji·had or je·had n, 1. a campaign waged by Muslims in defense of the Islamic faith against individuals, organizations, or countries regarded as hostile to Islam
2. any hostile campaign, for example, a series of political advertisements attacking an adversary

Kaposi sarcoma: red, brown or purple cancerous legions. A sign of advanced AID’s.

Lipoatrophy: devastating symptom of advanced AIDs where loss of fat from beneath the skin results in sunken cheeks and skeletal appearance.

Mammon: wealth and riches considered as an evil and corrupt influence

Moloch: Mo·loch or Mo·lech n 1. in the Bible, a Semitic deity to whom children were sacrificed 2. somebody or something that requires a costly and painful sacrifice, major aspect of Ginsberg’s original Howl

Operation Iraqi Liberation: originally proposed code name for America’s Operation Iraqi Freedom (note acronym spells OIL)

Sursum corda: a cry or exhortation, especially of hope