I have seen the great minds of my own mad
generation, lost there on the long road
to find-out, trolling in a dry wasteland
of television idols and false dawns;
of lingering doubts on the new world
order, lolling aimlessly at the trough
of some prefabricated nightmare dream,
where the subtle shimmer of some bright lie
draws even the most ardent activist
for truth into a warm apathetic
mire; of an amnesiac culture
that cannot even raise its voice above
the dull murmur of its own Machine; but
I am not my father’s Allen Ginsberg.
I have wandered out into the somber
night, high on the watered-down and cut smack
of misinformation, finding only
spare hints and veiled clues to the universe;
weak honeyed colored shots of Nirvana;
bits and broken pieces of some grand scheme
to resurrect the spirit of this place;
and in the tepid water of a fetid spring
have washed away only part of the sad
sickness that saps the strength of will, and hope,
leaving only a malaise of selfish
preoccupation with the status quo.
In this stark and violent land I have learned
I am not my father’s Allen Ginsberg.
Against the bleak sunrise of a new war,
the best minds of my generation blink
their startled eyes, like stunned deer in the road
that can only wait, paralyzed, surprised
as the blanket of our greed, frayed and torn,
looses itself from our stooped, weak shoulders
and we are discovered, naked and cold
on the fallow field of our investments;
as the slow, steady churning wheels of death
advance towards us, we pretend deafness,
turning a blind eye, or shifting our stance
so we can imagine there is no cost.
I cannot find a way to change this scene;
I am not my father’s Allen Ginsberg.
31 JAN 2003
