HOWLING in 2012

(dedicated to Allen Ginsberg's Howl)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by money, striving,

hysterically faked dragging themselves through fascist streets to

pawn their soul for the elusive buck

angelheaded hipsters losing the ancient heavenly connection

to the starry dynamo for the the machinery

of might.

Whose poverty and tatters are deep inside

Vats and cups smoking in sterile fluorescent whiteness

and jacuzzied condos beathing frost as they chop empathy

contemplating cash.

who numbed their brains with heaven, building a hell

and saw Trumps and Turners, angling, swaggering, and

on tenement roofs regurgitated.

who passed through the universities with good grades

and fool eyes hallucinating nothing but corporate strategy

among the tears of the poor

who excelled in the academies forclosings and rubbish

obscene modes etched on the windows of the skull

Who towered in cleanshaven classrooms in evening wear

turning their rooms into chaste caskets and listening to tickertape

down the hall.

Who, untrusted with their Lucite spears came burning down Manhattan

with a pelt of bloody scalps from Wall Street.

Who spit fire in dream boardrooms, dream Martini’s at 30 Rock,

took breath or purgatoried the competition night after night. With

screams, Persian rugs, with power stares, blackberries and Pads

Incomparable blind greed in dark roiling clouds, biting at the mind

sowing stains with a smooth sailing drift of spray from the drones.

It soaks, softens, building grey From black and white,

although it illuminates the slime of the machine.

Coyote solidities of walls, backdoor greenbacks forming fearful spawn,

spine drunken-ness over their caring

Storefront horrors of three piece, pin-stripe, patent leather traffic fright…

….fork and spoon unseen undulation among the roaring winter dusks

of Harlem.

Iron-fist rantings down two points, grinding light of time