After Howl

[create_destiny]

Assignment:

Read Allen Ginsberg's poem, "Howl."

Write a rant, (your own version of "Howl"). Be as rhetorical as you like, get up on your soapbox and scream. Use repetition and striking imagery.

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After Howl

Our days of terror are over now
you and I,
our apocalypse has ended,
the signs of war have faded
from our faces
now shining with holy oil
mingling with tears of gladness,
tumbling from tender sore eyes

Our days of torture ended
And we went rejoicing into that water,
you and I,
our hair hung in our faces,
washed with hyssop and made clean
we were kissed by simplicity
again and again
we tasted grace on our lips

These were the days of our mystical resurrection
when we knelt in holy places
smelling of beeswax, earth and incense
the chinking of the censor like bells breaking
the bonds of our psychic death
our minds restored from madness

we walked softly in those days
gathering sweetness,
thumbing woolen prayer ropes
tied in intricate knots by black-robed women
bathed in beauty and light

again and again
we heard holy words
chanted by musky, bearded angels,
sacred words and ancient melodies flooding
our hearts
the way made smooth
by suffering
again and again

the traces of war and apocalypse
once etched deeply into
our souls, are gone now
our minds ravished
by the heavenly mystery
only images
of our mystical Resurrection
remain

Comments

[nodressrehersal.livejournal.com]

Your not-rant is quite beautiful.

I don't think I can play this one; I have neither the energy nor the creativity to even know where to begin......

All I'd want to rant about is the hormone-induced acne-on/acne-off, fuzzy-thinking, addle-brained, nightly-sweat-soaking, emotionally exhausting, what-the-fuck-I-just-had-my-period-two-weeks-ago phase of life called perimenopause, and who wants to read that shit?

[createdestiny.livejournal.com]

I couldn't really play this one either, but I had to. I just don't have it in me anymore to tap into a stream-of-consciousness rage.

[gracegiver]

Whenever you post one of these challenges, I sit at my keyboards and try, and try and try. And Zip. The fingers fumble. The only way I can write free form is when I'm able to separate myself from myself. If you know what I mean.

I like what you did here. The theme of resurrection interlacing in each paragraph gives lots of interest.

Keep posting what you're doing. I'm devouring it.

[createdestiny.livejournal.com]

Ack! I hated this assignment because I just couldn't get a rant to flow out of me. Something else wanted to come out I guess and that's okay.

Thanks for the positive words. It means a lot

[whosplittheatom.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, this is the poem you mentioned on my post?

I love this, its like the polar inverse to 'Howl' in so many ways...

Well, you already know I can rant all too well...

But my rage is a game.
I play.
Sometimes. The. Universe. Fragments. INSIDEME.
12345.
And Ginsburg can play hide and go fuck himself with his starry dynamo, because you know why?
He, self-deluded piece of worthless beatnik shit, sat idly by with all his generation's best and idlest minds and mental-masturbated for decades to fevered self-induced visions of the cock-and-pussy-coated Void
THEY ALL WORSHIPPED
WHAT NONE WOULD ADMIT
and they invoked this demon on the heads and into the hearts of their unborn children,
and we have seen its face and its flaccid cock and festering balls and putrescent cunt and breats dripping black hydrocarbon petrochemical blood-for-oil mothers' milk,
as it walks naked through this world.
"Burning for that ancient heavenly connection"
they found their Faceless Namelessness, their fashionable Zen Oblivion, their drug-addled sex-rattled bliss, at the price of their children and grandchildren being born to suckle shit and live in wet cardboard and grow turnips in gravel.
And as that sorry lot burn through ozone in soccer-mom minivan SUV spaceships powered by dredged dinosaur blood and pour choking concrete like a plaster cast over a wounded world, billboards and signs and symbols screaming from every direction telling us what we need to buy to validate who or what they say we need or should or ought to be, we sit back and take shit for being "jaded" and "apathetic", when really, what the hell else are we supposed to do or say once we've looked into the war-face and gaping maw and insane black-hole eyes of the Beast whose lumbering leg these blind-boomer-beatnik-whateverthefuckyouwannacallthosemotherfuckers are still trying to hump like a little rabid dog in a suit and tie?
So when you see Ginsburg or Kerouac or Watts or Leary or any of those other wastes, you know what you do? You say "fuck that shit" and you spit in disgust, because they wanted the brainrape orgy of infinity and surely they'll get it.
Let me explain a little bit about the Machinery of the Night - it's ALL connected to everything else by lots and lots and lots of teeny tiny little strings, and you pull the ones that are connected to other people places and things and other people places and things pull the ones that are connected to you.
So there's your starry dynamo and all your empty pseudo-romanticized longing in a nutshell, and fuck you a thousand times over for forcing me to see before I was ready.

[createdestiny.livejournal.com]

This is really good. I'm not sure I can relate to your hatred of everything you call "baby-boomer" but I hate human fallenness and everything that human fallenness is responsible for, especially for some reason recently the suffering of animals. This fucked up fall is not their fault and they have nothing to gain from suffering, yet because of the strings you refer to they fell with us and it really fucks me up sometimes. I'm glad they are here because they bring me so much comfort, but to see this suffering is breaking my heart. Yes, human suffering is a nightmare, but this I can easier accept (sometimes, except for children) because we need this suffering to be transformed and to learn never again to create a hellish world like the one we live in.

[whosplittheatom.livejournal.com]

On the flipside of all that, on a day to day level I'm basically an incorrigible optimist; but I think you know that.

I mostly just hate the fact that people our age get so much shit for being apathetic, cynical, lazy, etc., when in reality we've had to fight tooth and nail for every shred of everything we've ever gotten - unlike the Boomers and the WW2 generations, who through unchecked greed, obliviousness to reality, etc., managed to reduce what once remained of the "American Dream" to dust.

But when I go to sleep at night, amidst all my own self-criticism and self-doubt and guilt and whatever else, I still know that everything I've ever seen come my way in life, I've fucking earned every cent of it. I want goodness and truth and REAL value, even if it means the long hard road of struggle to get there; but because of the fact that I have those values, and because every day is a struggle for me on some level, I can and do make judgements about those who have fucked things up by wanton carelessness and pursuit of ease.

I guess I don't think in terms of "the fall" anymore, in that I'm trying as much as possible to live forward rather than in retrospect, ie. I hold myself and my world in the present to what I know and imagine is possible or can be accomplished (if only we start colectively getting our shit together!), as opposed to lamenting the degeneration from some idealized past (which in reality we don't even know is anything more than a figment of the feverish collective human imagination!). IOW, I'm starting to realize to what extent we collectively and subconsciously tend to mythologize and symbolize (and eventually theologize) the experiences common to all life - conception, germination, birth, seperation, growth, struggle, joy, pain, mystery...

But anyway, thats neither here nor there! And speaking of animals, we have to go so we can pick up Roma, who is now officially gender-neutral! ;)

[createdestiny.livejournal.com]

Did you "earn" Bonnie or is she a gift from God to you?

You and I live in the richest country in the world. There are millions of people in this world who would give their right arm to be able to eat from American dumpsters. Yes, you and I have struggled, but your sense of entitlement frightens and worries me. A sense of entitlement is a pretty ugly thing to have in a personality or disposition and it leads to war and the bombing of innocent people if unchecked.

[whosplittheatom.livejournal.com]

Bonnie and I were just talking about it, and maybe both terms are somewhat misleading and inaccurate. I tend to think in terms of "earning", probably because that's how I was wired from a very early age. But you know what, I'm glad and thankful for my upbringing, even if it was harsh and oppressive in a lot of ways. When all was said and done, I ended up with what I believe to be a pretty balanced sense of justice and fairness, right and wrong, and a work ethic - in other words, even when I know what I'm doing to earn a living is bullshit, I'll still do my best at the bullshit, on principle (until I decide for whatever reason to throw wrenches into the bullshit, and even then I do my best at it!) But if "earn" isn't very descriptive of how we see our relationship, neither is "gift" any better. I'm sorry, but fuck that pathetic Calvinist self-loathing poison that sees everything people do as worthless and everything good that happens as an undeserved gift from God, the Great Begrudger. Bullshit - we both have immolated ourselves on the altar of this life, and do we deserve some positive recompense, and do we see each other as a mutually amazing karmic payoff for some of what we've went through? You bet your ass we do!

She just said, with a twinkle in her eye, "I'm not a gift, I'm your penance!" :)

As for "having a sense of entitlement"... what the fuck? No, get this straight - I have a sense of justice and fairness that what ANYONE has done deserves fair and proper payment. Most of what Christianity deals with in terms of morality, is taken care of in due course by natural process - people get their just desserts for what they have put into life, one way or another. And as for the mundane things of this world, well yeah, you're damn right I believe people are ENTITLED to a living wage, for example, as long as they are doing the corresponding work for it. America as a nation, of course, has earned several wars on our own soil, and I see that coming at some point. Will I get all patriotic and incensed about it when it happens? No. Will I be surprised? No. Will I get all bleeding-heart and join candle-circles for peace? No. I'll buck it up and deal with whatever reality is right in front of me, first and foremost the survival and well-being of my family, then the well-being of my friends and neighbors and community. As would any honest person.

So, no. The person who has 3 cars and a plush house in Suburbia and an 800G mortgage and 2.5 teenage kids sporting the latest Gapwear and iPods, that's where you find your "sense of entitlement", as well as the blindness that fuels all these stupid wars for oil and land. I'm EARNing every last bit of my $7.50 per hour at that factory, and believe me, almost none of it goes to frivolities. What, *I* should feel guilty that I'm richer than 3rd world people, or that bullshit American schemes of charity and welfare combined with rampant multinational colonization are only sinking them further in debt? What the hell, I'm being more a part of the solution than probably 99% of this country's population. If you want to worry about someone's sense of entitlement, worry about the rich boomer fucks from the Bay Area who are buying up all the land on the ridge in upper Bidwell and building their mansions and gated communities and driving around in goddamn Hummers. Dude, I rent, work a factory, scrape from paycheck to paycheck, and ride my fucking bike; I'm not the enemy in this world, and if I am, I'd like to know what I've done wrong!

?!

[whosplittheatom.livejournal.com]

PS - I apologize for the inflamatory nature of this reply, I'm not trying to start any hostility, I'm just trying to (hopefully) represent myself more accurately and make myself better understood. No worries, I hope. :)

[createdestiny.livejournal.com]

Maybe I confused the concept of earning something with the concept of entitlement.

We are not separate from everything else (including rich baby boomers) it's only our ego that makes us think we are....

more later, I have to go to work.

[createdestiny.livejournal.com]

Holy Shnikes! I guess I really touched a nerve there, sorry about that.

You're always going off on baby boomers and of course I can see why to a certain extent, but sometimes I wonder if you feel the need to revile a segment of society in order to be okay with yourself. And if so, then why "the babyboomers?" Surely there are other segments of the world's population more worthy of such derision. I personally like to blame Bush and Texans. ;P


I can't think in these boxes that are getting smaller and smaller with each response. How the hell do I put these under a thread?