I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.

(in new york city, counterculture is really everyone's culture.

I think the point might be to turn our madness into art, and to undestroy our country in the process.)



angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection









who sang out of their windows in despair









and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts









who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas

("mom?" "what's wrong, sweetheart?" "... I think I made an evil dove.")









who hiccupped endlessly trying to giggle









who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons









who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset









and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise









who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in paradise alley









who walked all night with their shoes full of blood









waiting for a door in the east river to open to a room full of steamheat and opium

("have you done a lot of modeling?" "oh, I'm a self-portrait artist.")







  

who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the hudson









who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull

("save yourself? save yourself?")









who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish









o starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here









in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on a highway









& their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion.







wockerjabby