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skin-slave · 4 months ago

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No apologies to Ginsberg for the theft and butchery of this poem. Sometimes the best way to love something is to chew it up. I think he knew that.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging their hope behind themselves like a stuffed animal loved too much to grow out of,

drinking from the cup of art and anger, searching for their connection to the wet thumping of the world,

who, deprived of official everything, sat up smoking on trestles and rooftops, with family not just found but kept,

who bared their brains and hearts and pasts, and wore their scars like kintsugi, like jewelry, like music,

who dug their feet into the dirt, radiant cool eyes narrow and tear-brimmed, knitting their fingers to strengthen their resistance,

who, chased into shadows as authors of obscenity, unread and misunderstood, made a home there and added a welcome mat,

who cowered at the thought of the love they deserved, at the branching possibilities that could follow if they dared to want it,

who feared being busted for walking, breathing, being alive while queer, while brown, while fertile, while fat, while refusing to dim and go out,

who ate fire and drank tears, shouting out the vintage, the high notes and hints, sommeliers of sorrow,

hollowed out the nightmares in their birdcage ribs to make room for dreams, planted and tended in secret,

loved each other but not commercially, fucked each other but not over, served as sacrificial grounding rods for the lightning in the mind,

flopped down in abandoned lots, backyard cemeteries, highway medians, scattering insects and dandelion wishes, soaking in a moment of sun, of warmth, of happy ever after,

who chained themselves to sacred trees and scared children, screaming, "I cannot lose you again," holding on regardless of what history has taught,

who jumped at the crack of doom, easily startled in the deepness of memory, and crouched, and wiped tears from dirty faces, and did not run this time,

who talked continuously, trying to get it all out while thought is still free and doesn't cost anything, scratching the dregs out of watercolor tins,

a lost gallery of last words, and first, stories blooming on blood-filled vines, ink-dipped eyelashes, missing teeth and time and unsure of anything,

who collected soulmates in cookie tins, and hid them under their pillows, needing so badly to save them from hospitals and jails and wars, gnashing teeth and needles,

whose worth defied measurement, mycelial nets that could not be separated and weighed, that cast the concept of the individual on hot pavement and watch it do nothing,

who became the hooved and fanged things that they are, that they're afraid of, fur grown long and shaved and spiked, thrifted skins stitched together in their last furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight, stretched knotted muscles and waited for the world to sleep, for their time to come, and were still waiting when the alarm went off,

who lit cigarettes and bowls and spoons, and scavenged bits of well-being from the dumpsters behind the capitol building, and learned to love the ash and mold, to love doing something,

who studied alone and graduated - or not - and studied alone, became fixtures in libraries, dug under paywalls, because they feel the hoofbeats of history returning under their feet,

who loaned their voices to other chants, stood with the fetishized, dehumanized, disenfranchised, the walking stereotypes and the ones just seen that way,

who thought they were only mad until they found the words for their needs and injuries, and learned they weren't just pissed off kids,

who asked the silent questions on an impulse on a winter day and spent the next week waiting for the bruises and their father's screams to fade,

who tried to make it worth something with mosh pits and sex and soup, scrawled their needs anonymously on desks and stall doors and watched others add their chapters,

who disappeared into attics and sewers, leaving behind nothing but easily fixed family photos and pets they'd never see again,

who dropped out and dropped off and dropped their last dollars into tip jars, then reappeared like a crocus passing out zines and trying on pacifism,

who trained to be medics for people protesting the narcotic haze of capitalism, and were shot and gassed, because care is too powerful,

who distributed digital pamphlets on radical acceptance, body neutrality, defunded police, an end to monoculture, to food deserts, to flat ballots and slavery and the shock that any of it is up for debate,

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums, under the echoing screams of a person paid to turn children into soldiers, and heard those screams in their sleep and woke up 15 at 35,

who complied in the back of police cars that mysteriously blackened their eyes and sometimes drove them straight to the morgue to save time,

who jumped turnstiles in the subway and put up plaques where benches used to be, who handed out sandwiches illegally, and never saw a tent community ever in their lives,

who testified behind a barrier of saintly motorcyclists, and were called whores and homewreckers until the bump started to show,

and were then rebranded human seraphim, Mary herself, a noble vessel with a script and a dressing room and a discrete abortion and an NDA,

who were vs the state, vs the cemeteries, vs the families who held funerals for their selfishness and carved deadnames on stones,

who were kept children behind a partition, then dumped into the quarry lake of adult life, and billed for the body recovery,

who lost their love to fate... no, to the dollar, to ignorance, to bigotry, to guns, to religion, to politics, to the very edge of never loving again,

who copulated ecstatic and illegal, loved their mixed children and their immigrant parents, revived the ancient pleasure of acting on conviction,

who were red-eyed in the morning and too tired to see red by noon, who faded and worried that they'd burned away completely, and might be dead any day now,

and laid down the work and watched the work take its first steps alone, who learned they were the secret hero of poems, the inspiration, the rock that creates the ripples,

who picked themselves up out of basements and unemployment offices, and brushed their hair, and let the sun give them sweetness for the first time in so, so long,

who walked all night to get out, to get away, to get lost in the last living trees that weren't planted as crops, rejecting the uncanny valley of unnatural nature,

who cast spells with jars of moss paste under the blue floodlight of the moon, threw seed bombs, wore the reflective vests of authority and gardened on roadsides in peace,

who ate ramen dry near the muddy water, mainlined caffeine while broiling in parking lots, purged wedding cake, had sleep for dinner,

who wept at the romance of torture flicks, who wished someone cared enough to hate them for who they were, not just what they represented,

who sat in boxes like alley cats and decided humanity is overrated, who stopped masking and started keeping boundaries,

who rose from ashes, crowned in flame, to be larks and kiwis, because it's far too much to be a phoenix, and they don't owe anyone a show,

who scribbled all night, holy words and building worlds, and shared them, and hoped that they wouldn't be stolen and mixed into AI gibberish,

who didn't keep their chins up or their voices down, who reached completeness by dreaming that brokenness does not preclude it,

who were warmed and validated at being mistaken for an egg,

who were denied their history, grief, dignity, place at the grown-up table, and threw the place cards off the roof,

who were followed quietly, whistled at, yelled at, chased, forced to duck into antique shops where they thought they might be safe, and cried,

who were pierced thru the feet with zigzags, wore holes in their hands at cash registers, took the 2" blade of harmless jokes between their ribs until it broke off, told to stop reacting, and burned alive when they did just that,

who attempted suicide in grade school, this actually happened, and were never asked why, just given a lecture on their responsibility to never hurt anyone's feelings,

who were liabilities, burdens, bills, dependents, faking allergies, defrauding disability programs, lying about genetics, conspiring with evil therapists, throwing up into bloody toilets for attention, to blame, to blame,

who drove cross-country to get married, to finish miscarrying, to finish dying, to file with a fairer court, to get a prescription, to get a divorce, to delay the loss of everything for another year or two,

who were never children in the way you'd think, just shorter and lonesome for heroes, and aren't willing to pretend it was any different,

who fell on their knees in churches that damned them, picked out care homes for parents who kicked them out, wrote wills to make sure someone loves those fuck-you boots until the soles fall off,

who weren't ashamed to be meat, to be mortal, to be monkeys, to be just some guy, golden heads and the charm of simplicity,

who last posted in 2015, "can't wait to get on the road tomorrow!" and left us unsure if that road took them to freedom or the grave,

who bought products and still didn't own them, paid for services and still didn't receive them, demanded resolution, and were drowned out by people accusing wifi of hypnotism,

who presented themselves on granite steps to ask why a woman 3.8 is lower than a man 3.8, why a Black 9 over is faster than a white 9 over, why working $2k isn't enough and disabled $2k is too much,

who were dropped in a concrete void for their trouble, slavery, rape, denial of doctors and dignity, a head in the count but not a vote in the box,

who watched as, in humorless protest, people bought things they hated to destroy on camera, a display of morality through violence,

who returned years later, stronger and more frail, to ink over their pen and needle memories, lines crisper, color of blood and cold,

whose bodies turned to stone at certain smells, whose minds fell maladaptive into worlds that didn't hurt, who held their own hands in the dark,

who collected names and phone numbers, people of qualification who would listen in spite of - because of - how they were born and who they became, who turned wire hangers into lilies and bought helium tanks just in case,

who tapped on shoulders and insisted, "If I'm not safe, you're not safe,”

who last remembered the sudden flash of headlights, flames, excruciating pain, and were fired over text while writhing in the ER,

who saw the world with both eyes, images juxtaposed and overlapping, double standards and triple, consequences scraping the soft forever like flood debris running downhill,

who were speechless and intelligent, shaking with frustration, while the court-appointed evaluator looked down at the two check-box options of retard and savant,

who were pregnant at 14, married at 12, returned to their abusers by smiling police, hurt by neighbors and priests and women who could not have done it, and didn't deserve a reputation befitting a madman bum,

who stood back up every time, even if it took years to do, adorned in the ghostly robes of music and memory, impossibly beautiful and not just to me,

with the absolute heart of the poem of life leaning on their crowns, awash in light.

#ive been working on this for many weeks and tbh i dont think ill do part 2 #this poem is about you #poetry #plagiarism #ginsberg

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