After Howl

This poem is inspired by Allen Ginsberg's "Howl."

I see the smartest and most beautiful people I know ripping

at the seams of life, getting bored in their boxes

while click-clacking on their laptops that don’t

even make that sound these days.

They are drinking pink wine from a plastic bag

in a cardboard box, high-fiving its claim

to sustainability when they have no idea

how to sustain themselves. They move

to Chicago or Austin and play the bass

and the French horn with tattoos on their arms and legs and necks

of the Great Lakes, golden red autumn leaves, a Venus fly trap.

They are talking and talking and driving

dented cars and growing moustaches

and staying awake to write a thesis

that they hope might prove them worthy

of the most prime academia. They are grinding

their teeth and biting their nails with excitement

and fear while thinking of what’s to come

for themselves, for the trees,

for their mindless friends and decaying parents

and the wretched people who will still be alive after they die.

They throw scraps of paper in a hole in the wall

near the floorboard, and they kick that hole,

making it even bigger, when they realize

it will eventually and inevitably get full

and there are limits and boundaries and capacities to everything.

They are frustrated and seething and ready

for anything that comes their way,

so they roll joints and watch reality television

and argue and throw a Frisbee in the yard.

They dance with statues in Philadelphia

and write everything down and hope that one day

they can do something about something

that means something to someone.

Oh, they hope. And they dream whirling dreams

of the internet and organic food and rotting corporations and the man,

hoping so much for everything all at once while laughing

with their heads back and mouths open wide to breathe in all they can breathe.

They want whichever war this is to end and they want to legalize it

and they want to learn whatever they can and they want to feed their hunger and get their fix

and they know things instantly but long for a time when there had to be effort.

They want wonderful wants and hope for things and ideas and places and everything to be good

and fantastic and all it can possibly be.