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, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkan- sas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, – Read more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15308#sthash.QAcTplGR.dpuf
People want to know,
Why Tucson?
With so many roots tied
to the star,
deep and connected,
why turn a back
To comfort?
To convince?
To culture?
Reasons abound
answers diverse,
yet similar.
Some old,
some recently learned.
More often than not
my answer is earthy,
yet ethereal.
Of another world,
yet of one world.
Answers giving birth
as hawks circle
riding the currents
above the foothills
gawking the ground
providing a Gary Snyder image
clear of mind
having no meaning, “but that
which sees is truly seen.”
— kenne
One of my favorite poets, Gary Snyder will be reading at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, October 7th. Lawrence Ferlinghetti has called Snyder, “the Thoreau of the Beat Generation.” He is a political, cultural, and environmental activist with superb writing skills, which allow him to effectively connect with the reader and listener in a very basic way. Here’s an example:
The shack and a few trees
float in the blowing fog
I pull out your blouse,
warm my cold hands
on your breasts.
you laugh and shudder
peeling garlic by the
hot iron stove.
bring in the axe, the rake,
the wood
we’ll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
drinking wine.
Nature Made — Image by kenne
