EXCERPT FROM 'This is the Beat Generation' BY JOHN CLENNON HOLMES

Any attempt to label an entire generation is unrewarding, and yet the generation which went through the last war [WWII], or at least could get a drink easily once it was over, seems to possess a uniform, general quality which demands an adjective ... The origins of the word 'beat' are obscure, but the meaning is only too clear to most Americans. More than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately, of soul; a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself. A man is beat whenever he goes for broke and wagers the sum of his resources on a single number; and the young generation has done that continually from early youth.

Friday, April 3, 2009

-^: PALIMPSEST :^-






Outside
clouds like static
fill the automatic sky
Inside
a television sun
Dolby winds stammer in surround


My private panoptic e`den
wherein
history makes me a man
software makes me a Poet
since the Author died


Pale fire in Xanadu
as the electric sign sighs,
sounds of the funeral pyre text,
and reveals itself like
a phosphene seraphim


This fearful angel guards me
in my e`den prison sphere

No matter
where still I wander
at the centre
I stay
the circumference
of my mediated garden nowhere
to be found
as I tread the paths of paradox


Inside
a pamlimpsest sun


Outside
still static clouds
blur the illuminated sky
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Rants, diatribes, jeremiads, romodomotads and any sort of passionate prose will be welcomed here.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Followers

annotationz from underground

My photo
chronicler of the bre@kBeat generation