The Gone World Being Really Gone

[A rather less-than-impressive meditation on the influence of the Beat poets on Punk Rock with slight reference to the 1960s counterculture. I consider this an interesting failure. The last line is obviously and embarrassingly ripped off from a Harlan Ellison short story named "Croatoan". And, of course, the blatant use of the beginning of Ginsberg's "Howl" in the third verse. It's not plagarism, it's an homage. Right. I did this sort of thing fairly often in my poems of this period. If you think you recognize fragments of music lyrics in other poems here, you're probably right. I like to think these are referential rather than plagarism. I rarely used more than a few words or a phrase at a time so I think I'm safe from being sued. I think.]


The Gone World Being Really Gone

pictures of the gone world by lawrence ferlinghetti
was once within my grasp, my caressing possession
the fleeting flutter of beat beat beat images
drifting singing thru my pores and becoming
passion in union with my lazy flesh holding
conference with floating matrices of my mind

soon i will sell even allen ginsberg's empty mirror
and it will be gone gone gone into the past and shot
apart by infidels who cannot dig the importance
of eating to the beat beat beat language of poets
who understood and practiced another modal scale

i saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging their
fear-ridden bodies through alleys ill-lit in search
of love lost ten years ago before they even knew
what they were looking for with their angry minds

too precious for words and savaged by thoughts of
selling their bodies just to make the bread to buy
a meal on the neon streets in some burgerking or
another allnite joint selling an american dream
very cheaply to satisfy a grasping hand reaching

sweetheart, have you seen them running wild as
they pushed safetypins into already bloodshot eyes
to show how little they care for the world they
love so strongly they must take downs to insulate
them from the ironhard embrace it offers seductively

space invaders and punks reeling in the streets
in the hope of realization of the glory of it all
waiting for something clean to come their strange way
hurting and hungry as they reach for the throats
of the controllers manipulating them in pure wonder

who sneered with passion at all who showed any
passion and ripped their guts out in bars to
spill the heavy beat emotion out in a form real
and solid in the silence encased in the city
in waves of pristine feeling and ultimate understanding

can you hear them full of grace in the nighthome
beat beat beating drums and hearts full of cynical
thought because of the dreams forced upon them
with many complications and neverelevant decisions
do you hear them lawrence they call you father

February, 1980
© 2006, wordlackey for php