CALL ME BELOVED

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night…”

– excerpt from “Howl,” by Allen Ginsberg

sometimes I feel that frenzied kinship –
that the scattered and ragged youth are still here,
doing holy work out on the streets and sidewalks.
it’s difficult to say but I get the feeling
that it never gets any easier, and maybe
that’s the point. we rage and rage,
try to carve out something achingly beautiful
in the time we have but it’s never enough,
never quite what we meant and so
we, ourselves, ache for want of it.

I watch the best minds of my generation from afar,
across self-imposed distances that ensure
I’ll never become as close as I’d like.
outside metaphorical windows I listen
to them sing their songs, beat against
the desktops and slide fingers down
the fretboards, dragging pens across
marble notebooks and their tired
glassed-over eyes across their screens.

across time zones and into their houses
I swear I can hear them sleep – the thought
settles an unrelenting soreness in my chest,
because I feel the very same onus to
create. I know the day-after-day
devastation of failure that hangs
over our heads.

tell me that the desire consumes us;
that in some distant time, in some
fantastic place we will find ourselves
seated at the cessation of all our misery –
all of the routines that consumed us in search
of that hazy sense of destiny and purpose
suddenly at an unceremonious end.

tell me we’re fighting the good fight,
that all of our pretty swan songs
and clumsy sentences were enough.
tell me they mean everything in the end.