a little too Ginsberg I'm told, suggestions on how to clean this one up a bit (or a lot). Beware, it's long.

Question

Scream
Drunk on society, drunk on systems, the sordid numbing gin of ‘84 courses trough the veins of all. The masses move, breathe, wither together, a grey ocean of black holes with faces. Words of no significance fall from every mouth to the ground- nothing is absorbed, no one is listening, but they speak just the same. A million soliloquies droning on like the great whirring of a terrible machine.
We live on this vague stage set where California sunsets smell suspiciously of oil paints, and time is measured in curtain calls and falls. Here we stand like shaking Hamlets, staring through the hole in the black drapery of our shallow minds and fragile sanity, staring into the depth of the ghostly shadow thoughts we can barely comprehend.
We live behind these glass walls of store fronts, clear cells, freedom is as green as Liberty’s smile, which is as ambiguous as Mona Lisa’s eyes, which are as brown as the dried blood of slaughtered years on the thinning c

currency of now.
Christened with the dew of tears, new idols slip between out smiles. Waking up like children to a brave new world, we stumble over offerings of sex, wine, fear, the trite necessities of gods. These gods we’ve made with our hands, these gods we’ve made with our words, these machinations of machinery we slam together with mad adoration, these apparitions of ideals and theories we pour over eyes like acid until we see only the glorious pain that whispers our lonely worn out names in the night, like loveless caresses of rape.
But we can’t get enough of these gods we’ve put in place to govern our thoughts with obsession.
The floating eyes of a madman laugh at me through the fog of delusion over my head, I am alone with my stash of smoking pens and crackled paper, trying to find my meaning through addiction, like the dealer sharing this fog of delusion with me, like the kid I saw last night, tripping over enlightenment and landing on the asphalt.

And Ginsberg, did you know what you were saying, compulsively throwing up your words, offering them to America, black and white photographs of the minds spontaneous activity, spontaneous combustion on your page, it all explodes into modern epic formless prophecy. Poetry is richer for your liplicking, bone clenching, madman grasp of truth. But now, I have seen the greatest minds of my time raped by the desperate culture of lies on both sides, ( “a plague on both your houses” the panting political casualties cry). Innocence runs like blood from the body of our youth, a corporate wail has cut me through the night, and the howls of vultures ride on the wind like a scent. And now, I have seen the best mind of my generation dissolving in the corrosive shower of drugs, the acrid vapor of addiction laced with pleasure burns the skin like obsession, like lust.

I hate the faces on the screens of our large screen TV’s, leering with their grotesque view of America. This is not my land they know, this is not my reality they live, this is the lowest common denominator. Reality TV: the bastard whore of entertainment and morbid curiosity. The paranoid flashing eyes of egocentrism stare inward, the blinkless blind eye of the screen hypnotizes, and the painted face of a false society drips with the potent perfume of narcissism and make voyeurs of viewers.

Allow them to placate you with their rationalizations, allow them to sedate you with commercials and the comforting throbbing buzz of all the technology we employ. They know all, they know who we are what we need, they know how to regulate the information that forms our thoughts, they know the eerie lullabies that rock us to sleep… Who are they? I don’t know, but it’s better not to ask, because if they are made up of us, than what are we, and what’s the difference, and why do we listen and allow them power? See now how unsettling questions are? Hush now. Sleep to the slow breathing of nameless faceless gods.

If Al would be pleased, I won't clean it up... I prefer verbosity to the clean zen minimalism that is in vogue... I think I was born in the wrong generation... Thanks man, for the good words!

Dope Phool: we need mental coney islanders in this oh so dramatic world!

sorry, *dark* phool...

Thanks Todd for your kind words, it really means so much to me that you connect with the poem. This particular poem I was told to get rid of by a poetry instructor. She was very influenced by Eastern thought, of the opinion that less is always more. However, I just haven't been able to let it go. So I'm glad it is alive and accesible, thank you for taking the time to read it! You are quite an encouragement.

Dancing Bee, I'm glad you're in a good mood today! I see you're a James Wright fan, I like him very much, and oddly, when the poetry instructor told me to throw this poem out, she suggested I read some Wright to learn brevity and simplicity. I did, and I sort gained some literary grace, but I never applied it to this piece. Yes, it is a prose poem... sorry! Thanks for reading it!

Answer 1

I must be in a good mood today. I like the energy of this. I'm hoping the confined column is the tragedy in the formatting, I'm not a big prose poetry guy--there I said it. You are right about the Ginsberginess of this, but keep your eye open, you never know when someone will make a submission call for a Ginsberg anthology or issue.

Good luck!

Answer 2

Wow...just wow. You held my attention to the final word. I hit your first '84 and think of Orwell. I start thinking of Huxley and you hit me with Brave New World.

Lines that really stood out:

Words of no significance fall from every mouth to the ground- nothing is absorbed, no one is listening, but they speak just the same. A million soliloquies droning on like the great whirring of a terrible machine.

California sunsets smell suspiciously of oil paints,

We live behind these glass walls of store fronts

it all explodes into modern epic formless prophecy

I've got to stop there...there are just too many good images. I'm having trouble giving you an opinion on this, clearly you have the seed thoughts for a hundred smaller poems here, but outside of doing some ruthless edits to cut out every phrase that doesn't sing to you personally...I actually like it as it is. Yes, I'm sure there is some editing you can do (the ruthlesss cutting), but even with that I still see this as a large piece. I'm sorry if these thoughts aren't too helpful, but a glib response won't help you. It would take probably a couple of weeks to edit though this and reflect. I guess my off the cuff advice would be to read it to yourself out loud and cut every phrase or image that isn't exceptionally powerful, and see what you're left with.

This was such a pleasure to read. Thanks.

Answer 3

Good rant, he'd be proud. Only suggestions I'd have is to break it into several pieces. You have a few sections that could stand on their own...it would shorten each poem and tighten it up a bit. Additionally, there are more than a few typo's in there, along with a few malapropisms and cliche's...that if you're going to use, should be in "quotes" to show you know they're cliche...and that's why you're using them.

All in all full of good images...some minor chaff, but mostly good wheat. Nice job.

I'd give it a very close review, but it's too long to do it justice as submitted, especially in this forum.

Answer 4

Was the title homage to Ginsberg? It's certainly was a sign of things to come!

I think the piece has is good and has even more potential if you could go back at it. I don't know if you wrote this in one long sitting but it's the kind of piece I would write in one long sitting in a stream of consciousness state. That provides continuity of tone for the piece but makes it hard to go back and edit.

I will generalize for the sake of brevity and say yes, it is a little verbose. But let's not go overboard. I think that's part of the genre...an uncensored sort of rant that is less constrained by form than traditional poetry.

Since I know you are smart enough to go back and read your work with what I say in mind, I'm not going to give loads of examples because, first, I can only see two paragraphs in front of me with this format, and second, the piece is too long for me to go through it.

Part of my struggle reading this (and I read it yesterday and had to come back to it this morning so I could digest it over night) is whether some of the vernacular you use is deliberate, unapologetic homage to the genre, a failed attempt at even better word choices and imagery, or just a little laziness/emotional attachment to the piece (?) on your part that leaves it at the margin of being good versus very good. If it's the first, then it's my lack of grounding in the genre even though I'm passingly familiar with it. If it's one of the other two, then it might make sense to you to go back and take another look.

Because I am only passingly familiar with Ginsberg, I can really make myself look uninformed/ignorant by offering just a couple examples, but I think I have to, in fairness to the worthiness of your work. This gives you the opportunity to rationalize that I don't know what I'm talking about if it's clear to you that I don't. :)

So, is the repetition in the beginning (drunk on society, drunk on systems) what you want, or is there another, more powerful, more descriptive, even offensive word to drive the point home in place of the second "drunk?"

Is "a grey ocean of black holes with faces" a lazy attempt at imagery or deliberately nebulous in leaving me wanting to know what you really mean?

Do "words of no significance 'fall' "? or is there another word that either creates a sound or deliberately creates no sound (or some other impression) for the reader such that the cliche "fall on deaf ears" isn't suggested in that entire sentence ("...but no one is listening.")? If any of this makes sense to you, then go back and reread your piece looking for this kind of thing.

It's not that I didn't like this piece. I think my problem might be that I like it so much I want to see you make it better...which is clearly within your ability.

I'm glad I let this one sit overnight because when I read it this morning I found so much more of the meter and (what I would call) internal rhyme. For me, it is part of the fabric of the piece, but such a nuance that it is more a thread than the actual material. Nice effect.

I did like reading this. I thought it took some guts to put it out there. And if my critique is all wet, well, it took some guts to put my ignorance out there in the interest of being of some help! Cheers!

Answer 5

Largely, I like this. Even if I tend to be more of Coney Island of the Mind kinda guy.

Answer 6

Diggin' it. You've just been "grokked." Al would be proud. Loved the "California sunsets smell suspiciously of oil paints" phrase.Real stream of consciousness grittiness to it.

Answer 7

you were told wrong , its yours be proud , it was great , gindsberg was a homosexual , please
keep writing it wa svery good