Howl (My first published piece. Appeared in issue #85 of The Red Fez)

Yeah, I saw the best minds of my generation strung out.

    We were caught naked in moonlight,

heading for that “angry” Ginsburgian fix that opened skies anew -

commencing discussions on hip hop, wearing beats,

and falling with gravity into dimlit streets.

We were naked. We didn’t care.

Plaid went mainstream. But we were

talking hip hop and jazz,

and we were liberated.

Didn’t suffer,

Weren’t slaves.

Plaid went mainstream

but we had beatnik dreams.

We, the liberated - the free -

of tyrannical parental advice or consent.

It was our time.

It was our time.

And we were bound to ourselves not to waste a second of our, short, lives.

And we had beatnik dreams.

Suffering, we found ourselves;

our parents weren’t around. No advice.

so we built our lives on minimum wage,

condemned to be “Free”

condemned to youth and low wage,

and debt and overwork and bills

adding up an army - waging war on the spiritually conflicted soul -

and fleeing from stress, we fake our deaths to avoid income tax.

But...it was our time….                                                                         

So yeah, I knew the brightest minds of my generation. They were brave.