I've wanted to embark on this task for a while but I couldn't decide which literary piece I wanted to butcher. I was originally thinking of condensing a whole book, but that would have taken forever and I'd probably get bored after three pages. Then I thought to myself, "Why not go easy on yourself and find an author who you can relate to and would actually enjoy ripping off his style?" So I chose part I of Ginsberg's "Howl". I knew that my resulting piece would be very different from the original poem, both in content and overall message, but I stuck with the structure and stream of consciousness style, producing a fairly satisfactory piece (in my opinion).

I decided to re-work this piece due to the fact that the world has changed (in a big way) since the time he wrote it. Sure, we still have "the best minds of my (our) generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," (Ginsberg 1957) Yes, I just cited that, but the screenplay for the stage of the world has progressed to a wholly new production. As usual, this poem is chock full of metaphor and symbolism, so to any literarily (new word) disinclined people out there: no, I'm not saying that homeless people will take over the world and kill us all. That would be terrifying.

Anyways, I've provided a recording since I believe that my work is better expressed verbally. But take note, the allowed recording time is incredibly short, so I had to talk as fast as I could. Which was exhausting.

(by the way, this application won't let me put my text in the originally intended format, so ignore the apparent lack of poetic structure)


Scream For The Urchin

An arid apocalypse is upon us now, and who will be there to save our poor, leathered skins?

Not the foul-footed street mimes with their undone brains
and scanty cloth lips,

who revel in the stench of an all-night gang-fight when life is lost and purity is saved for those with heavy pockets,

who dream of erasing their concrete scars and black pen cardboards shouting “Me, Me, Me!” when a man with dirty hands thinks to cross the street,

who can only speak when spoken to, weep when compelled, rise against when instructed and live freely when chained to a lonesome tree, planted by the wayside,

who never think to think twice when they are served a helping of poison pity and pennies in a jar filled with the butts of Marlboro reds,

who fast talk and pour the acid of their souls onto the fair lips and knees of the sweet ones that lightly tiptoe along the edge of red curbs,

who cry to the moon at sunrise and wipe their greasy ears on the flowerbeds of the earth’s tick-tock skies,

who deny themselves the right to wake up after a fitful slumber and instead choose to count their reapings after sowing the plots for the mares of both night and day,

who cry, “Exalt us, oh Moloch, for the end is nigh!” while living amongst the deceased demons of old,

and encased within the minds of the holy ones, they cannot and will not see through the torrid sea of black blood and dermis, compelled only to scrape at their own scalps,

it is them who will fail to exonerate our plastic hearts, lift us to clear skies and save us for morning,

it is them who will catch us with their infinite fishing lines, dragging us down to the dirt beside their calloused and rotten feet, burying us with the rest and asphyxiating with open lungs,

it is them who walk and crawl and piss between our feet and through our legs, siphoning the souls out our hollow livelihoods and the raspberry jam out of our too-tough heads,

and it is them, who in the end, will throw our hands to the dirty dogs of the everlasting institution, and as we crawl upon our weeping bloody stubs, they will crawl right beside us, gasping for breath as we go.