Howl 2 (1997)

(with apropos apologies)
Wanna-be Howl 2


for Stacy, who couldn't be here to see it



I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by themselves, wanting more,

lusting for the next high, the next hit, the next trip,

those who out of contempt had their destinies chosen for them,

who normal for most of their lives exploded into drugs and altered their

mind, unable to escape the desire for escape could not change the
circumstances,



who drove through the dark night, faster & faster, to get to some place they could not

name but drew them nonetheless for they had been told about it,

who watched from the highest towers of Babel the sparkling cityscape and

reflected upon

their faux triumph over all the other players of the game spinning the

world around to suit themselves,

who self served one billion served drive-thru commercializing everything

denouncing it as

they go along making more money, hating the popular loving the unique,

making the unique popular,

who shopped at the Gap at the mall & wearing khakis and Nikes of Mr.

Jordan, thinking

how beautiful were their clothes, finally seeing what others calling in

they could be calling trite and right,

who starved for attention and food spent their last nickels on more drugs

just to make it all

better only to give themselves a temporary relief from their imagined

horrors of

life,

who traversed the great I-95 in search of the glory of New York only to

find Delaware, its

turnpikes & those too of New Jersey, etc.,

who raved and danced and drank and drank and smoked etc. until they could

no longer

feel their bodies or have a need for them anyway,

who could not make a decision because they had not been told how to &

perpetuated the

myth of indecision throughout Boston,

who sat alone in their rooms, garages, cars, contemplating their fate,

never getting enough

of their Recommended Daily Allowance of vitamin Reality,

who talked of God & Jesus and then of money and power, realizing that one

is the

other�s apotheosis but equal in their minds in not only complexity but

also

importance,

who did not listen to the Surgeon General and smoked to spite themselves

and their

parents though accepted by friends alike & friends dislike,

who praised Kerouac & Rousseau�s ingenuity, loving Plato & Russell &

Nietzsche & Hemingway, never having read Playboy,

who fought the habit only buying a pack of Camel Lights and smoking them

all in one

night and not caring and not remembering and not seeing,

who wandered around deserted suburban streets with yellow streetlights &

green street

signs in the frigidity of summer waiting and expecting the change in

reality to come from the trip,

who played football & basketball & soccer, etc., knowing their luck but

not

acknowledging it yet taking the spoils of popularity and position in the

grand high school scheme,

who e-mailed love letters waxing ecstatic, poetic, philosophic, to tell

their loved ones

three to ten thousand miles away about their dog & car & love,

who photographed the beer can that everybody loves, displaying texture not

symmetry,

and being loved by everyone but themselves, sleeping in the same bed every

night, damning self immolation and glorifying New York & Matisse,

who went to Virginia because it was free and there proceeding to immerse

themselves in

counterculture, whatever it may be being, finding the answer lying in the

same place in a different form,

who went to Georgia because it was natural, noticing the Thoreauvian

setting and

recreating Walden without the individuality just the good parts, loving

the leaves etc.,

who went to Chicago because it was good, loving the status quo, loving

talk radio &

George Bush & Ronald Reagan, waxing rhetorical, unable to escape their

upbringing, staying put because it�s safer,

who brought to the Museum of Modern Art their sense of unique perspective,

finding it

written in the museum�s pamphlets, hailing the taxi outside as though

nothing happened,

who trashed, burned, scorned by his classmates, continuing his tradition

of excellence, did

he break down? and leaving the relativity of existence,

who loved Rand & Aristotle & the like, caring for themselves, creating the

facade of the

paper mache building of personality, framing their philosophy and raison

d��tre around the antiquated and overused popularly disavowed

masterpieces,

who went to the Ivy League for the name and fame and game,

who ate those little pieces of paper to learn new things about the world

and learning

mostly that the things weren�t what they wanted to learn and there

reasoning the duality of being and adopting schizophrenia and eating

Prozac & Zoloft and cleaning their clothes with color-safe detergent,

have determined without that much of a doubt that existence is futile

though being

challenged from among their own ranks or self,

my god, he hath wrought a modern age of mythological connectedness and the

Internet

(thank You for your fiber optic one point four four megabits per second)

and the Web and such and the evil lurking therein,

and who has thus recently come to the conclusion Deus ex Machina is not

really all that

real, scaring everyone off in the meantime,

couldn�t wait to learn Einstein & Planck & immortal Heisenberg only to

find the rigorous

tedium of university,

stifled by form and restricted by limits bounded on all sides by the

impenetrable

exaggerated inflated pseudo-establishment, eternal in time space money,

will become the Phoenix, the President of the United fucking States and

all her empire and

replace Gates & Greenspan & Buffett & them and therefore become them.