What Freedom Means To Me

I’ll become an ugly cross dresser and flirt around in those dirty bars. I’ll inject some heroin into my numb veins till I can see clearly. 

The young kids scream to the streets;

“End the War on Drugs

End the War on Me

Tell the Power to Shove It

I have to be an American

So Goddamn

End the War”

The young children speak incoherent sentences that most in a suit can not understand.

The streets are paved with gold and some homeless man’s s**t. 

The beauty is beholden through the eyes of the sickly, like me.

And we are in the land of the enslaved and the home of some drunk funny cowards. 

I just popped another pill. And drank some Diet Soda. Standing atop Mount Rushmore.

The young, big lipped, man stares at the big billboards. Their bright and shiny colors create a media driven high (that is dangerous for a long period of time, cite Network News). The man wants to be a big star. Up there with Kanye and Jimmy Dean. He pouts those big lips to the sparkly Muhammad, hidden in the clouds. Later, while toying around with some guy, the man thinks of his dealer. The black man who waits on 7th Avenue every fourth Thursday, holding about 1000 grams of good coke inside his Met’s hat. Walking down the fake pavement roads the man remembers his Puerto Rican mother. An incompetent women, who rode the bureaucracy to a nice job in Houston. 

The old kids are still screaming to the street;

“My Freedom is Your Demise”

Oh how Mr. and Mrs. would like them to shut their poor little mouths. 

The man buys a pink revolver from some redneck in a jean jacket. While walking home, the man thanks Jesus for the old white men who exchange a couple of bucks for a killing machine. Oh, how the man could feel the freedom juices rise him up. 

Oh, it only took $24.75 to become a real American.

Reviews

[h d e rushin]

17 years after Ginsberg's death and still "Howl" howls thru us as a commentary on the crazy s**t
of the exploits of his mental patient friend; our mental patient friends. I read it (Howl)
as a freshman at the University and remember not being able to sleep that night. And that's
what freedom, especially poetic freedom does to the soul. It illuminates from the rooftops
of Paradise Alley or from the dingy street corners of "anyplace America"/. The ultimate
freedom is not life in the suburbs with a golden retriever and a sprinkler system but lifting the
veil off "fake pavement roads. Kinda like that scent from the "Terminator" when the damn thing
just wont die off, you have to wait to the movie's end for death to be killed.

if you know what I mean?

a wonderful trip you've taken us on my friend....dana

[Olivia]

I know exactly what you mean. Thanks so much!

[Valentine]

Being a Christian, I prefer not reading words with the misuse of God's name in them. Otherwise a poem of violence. Valentine

[Olivia]

I truly did not mean to offend anyone through this poem
thanks anyway

[SuspectGray]

Put down the gun and walk away ....slowly

[Olivia]

Thank you!

[Beccy]

So called freedom is an elusive thing. Whether clean cut All American, or an ugly cross dresser flirting in dirty bars, it's still a conformity to type; there is no real originality. The powers that be will always know, as they have done since time began, that it is a far too dangerous a thing to be allowed out of it's cage.

That last line is frighteningly perceptive. Beccy.

[Olivia]

Yeah, I get what you're saying, thank you so much :)

[W.k.kortas]

To piggy back on the good jacob, there are echoes of the Beats here (one can hear a bit of Ginsberg toe-tapping in the background), with perhaps a touch of Lou Reed crossed with Mario Cuomo's "Tale of Two Cities" speech. There is, as jacob noted, a great deal of grittiness here, but it's well-placed and well done as opposed to being down-and-dirty for its own sake. This is anger done right.

[Olivia]

Thank you so much

[jacob erin-cilberto]

this is dark and gritty...felt the sixties blend into the modern day, with this jazzy rendition of "takin' it to the streets"

and the kids are still screaming!

i love poetry that really has something to say...this reminds me of the Beats...if, say, ginsberg were writing today...

[Olivia]

Thank you, as always