(my)HOWL

(my)HOWL

for
Allen Ginsberg                                   

I

I saw the worst minds of my generation, a plague of
                madness, soul-starved in naked depravity
dragging Negroes through the streets at midnight
                this angry system begging for a fix,
angels of Armageddon burning for the ancient prophesy
                disconnected from the starry dynamo in twisted
                machinery of eternal night, 
who with wealth beyond imagination watched impoverished
                humanity smolder from the echoed marbled darkness
                of gated seclusion hovering over once-city remnants,
                contemplating nil, 
who pared young brains through dense fences of Hell and
                padlocked doors, scarring blank slates forever
                starved for illumination, 
who bought out universities with cool venture capital fortunes
                in hallucinatory self-importance while graduating tragic
                scholars of staggering debt, 
who were purged from the cloud for live-streaming the
                obscenity of their hate through small shattered
                screens, 
who slashed away at long ragged snakes of tattered clothing,
                burning money on porous steel dreams, wasting caged
                lives to the Terror at the wall, 
who busted heads in public, and silenced dissent in anony-
                mous white vans from Portland to Chicago to New York 
who ate junk food in Oval Offices or drank bleach in churches
                death, or purgatoried their lungs in unmasked bars
                night after night 
with thoughts, with prayers, with hollow promises, false
                claims, Diet Cokes and endless lies, 
incomprehensible blind tweets shuddering loud, and
                light in the mind leaping towards polls in
                Mar a Lago & Fantasyland, illuminating the sub-
                conscious underworld of Times past, 
OxyContin realities in backwood bleak economies,
                drunken dawns in tented storefronts, joyriding
                limousines playing Let’s Make a Deal in the
                flickering American winter, roaring past lost lives
                and lost minds, 
who chained themselves to cardboard prophets for a four-
                year descent into Promised Land mirages,
                scattering blame among innocents, until the noise
                of collapse brought them down betrayed, butt-hurt
                and broken, railing at their own images reflected in
                the shattered mirrors of Now, 
who sank to knees of worship for the narrow-minded god
                of their own creation, sitting at the right hand of the
                false prophet profiteering and listening to devout
                crackpots speaking in forked tongues, 
who spewed continuously in 140 characters from toilet
                to table to desk to toilet to table to desk to toilet
                to bed and toilet again, 
a tragic gaggle of pundit commentators jumping through
                hoops, lowering their ever-lowering bar even
                lower, beneath dignity, beneath decency, beneath
                truth, 
accusing, blaming, insulting, mocking, threatening,
                alluding to false facts and fantasies, delivering
                crotch kicks and backstabs to victims, moralists
                and vets, 
with intellects exchanged for total loyalty, and pardons
                granted to bag men and butchers, the meat of the
                former-favored cast to the curb, 
who descended the Golden Escalator of Destiny to leave a
                trail of sixteen white elephants picture postcards of
                Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, 
envying the Korean rocket man, the Russian mob boss, the
                Turkish strongman, the Philippine enforcer, the
                Brazilian firestarter, the cruel Israeli landlord, and
                the Chinese president-for life, 
who wandered from dressing room to dressing room of
                the Beauty Pageants of America, wondering what
                pussy to grab next, leaving no trace of heart, 
who cut deals in golfcarts golfcarts golfcarts racketeering
                walrus mulligans in lonesome foursomes with fair-
                weather friends, 
who studied Mussolini von Mieses Ayn Rand prosperity
                theology and satanic pregnancies but preached to
                TikTok empty seats in Tulsa, 
who loned it down the path of the South Lawn, a vision of
                crumpled untied faded smeared with orange collar
                and small white palms, 
who doubled-down on anarchy futures and worshipped at
                the false altar of Big Data and talking telescopes
                laserfocused on private lives, 
who jumped into raw deals with the Chinaman on artless
                impulse while leaving his cards facedown for a cold
                winter Christmas shopping in smalltown America, 
who lounged fat and lonely in Mar a Lago with no music pets
                or laughter, and conversed with the One Jew Nazi
                about infestations of eternal White America while
                giving painful birth to his own Shithole Country, 
who disappeared prosecutors for getting too close to Russian
                associates, erasing paths to shadowy payments leaving
                nothing but the ash of evidence scattered in lobbies of
                the Ukraine, 
who reinvented weather along the Southern Coast and saved
                Alabama from Dorian’s mode of destruction using only a
                Sharpie marker, 
who burned clean coal despite the fact that it simply does not
                exist beyond the propagandic haze of Capitalism, 
who distributed 250 million dollars worth of Javelin Missiles
                after seeking a quid for their pro quo as the sirens
                of the whistleblowers wailed, and Zelinsky wailed,
                and the Democrat Congress also wailed, 
who broke down blue boxes in black neighborhoods in
                naked desperation before dismantled machinery and
                skeleton crews, 
who’s bit-part AstroTurf shrieked with delight for fifty bucks
                and a free t-shirt, fluffed by megaphones of praise and
                the intoxicant of proximate fame, 
who wept stale beer into national microphones and dragged
                girls into frat party bedrooms groping genitals
                and judicial robes, 
who fucked the Statue of Liberty in the ass while self-
                appointed saints testified with prideful ecstasy about
                god’s plan, 
who chanted “blood & soil” to the romantic glow of their
                Cost Plus tiki torches and partied like it was 1933, 
who bailed on rose gardens and public lands for cutting,
                mining, fracking, drilling, dredging, extracting, paving
                and laying pipe through sacred cemeteries and holy
                waterways freely to whomever came to pay, 
who word-farted endlessly trying to communicate but wound
                up lost behind a partition of TelePrompters til faux
                journalists came to lob softballs, underhand, 
who sold their souls to the siren songs of seduction – the
                hollow melody of loveless lust, the pathetic bombast of
                unearned power, and the unresolved dissonance of an
                unquenchable greed that makes nothing, gives nothing,
                and offers nothing but must have everything in return, 
who graduated from Libertine University with a speedo and a
                glass of black water, summoning The Fixer for future
                endorsements and scratching that unHoly Itch while
                making love offerings to the Saintly Pool Boy with a
                vision of ultimate cuck bathed in the fetid gyzym of
                hypocritical self-righteousness, 
who island pimped for heads of state and socialites, spilling
                semen on the red eyed trembling innocents, with book
                upon book of names and numbers dying with them by
                enforced suicide, 
who whored their night-school law degree in defense of
                darkside extra-curriculars, W.B., legal hero of the Secret
                Government, launderer, Bully of Columbia, and staunch
                defender of BCCI, — death penalties and absolute
                power in pursuit of the traditional moral order &
                executive privilege, & The Crusades, while earning
                the contempt of Congress for sympathetic editings
                & whitewashings, & heat-beaming paths for
                Lafayette Square photo-ops, & allies of his King, 
who faded away after his security clearance got lifted,
                then backed the Alabammy Judge who dates ‘em
                young before crapping out in Europe, abandoned
                by Mercer to hawk white gin blossom nationalism
                and fraudulent wall futures and begging pardon after
                stumbling off Guo’s yacht in Post Office handcuffs, 
who found clemency with their hands full of blood,
                littering Iraqi soil with pieces of anything that
                moved, before sealing the grey room full of spent
                casings and desecrated souvenirs, 
who longed for the diplomacy of war and mocked the
                global constraints on his sovereign, hawking pre-
                emptive strikes before testifying by proxy on the
                brief ride of a best-seller then slowly fading into
                oblivion, 
who ate Zimbabwe leopard and flashed the elephant’s
                severed tail, bottom-feeding hunters looting
                charities and always punching down, 
who wept in private at the lack of romance, and swatted
                away the grabbing hand that leaves them to walk in
                the rain without an umbrella, 
who sat uninvited at the G20 breathing in rarefied air
                while longing for daddy’s lap, and hawked dresses
                and black beans from high atop her princess loft, 
who coughed up sneering contempt at the enemy of the people,
                ever-spinning mouthpiece flamethrowing unapologetic
never-lie explanations behind the desecrated podium, 
                who sprayed his mercenary blackwater on foes both foreign
                and domestic while his sister prayerfully profited from
                turning American education into gibberish, 
who cooked up & sold his own mythology from the heart
                of the apple, eyes frozen with robotic denials,
                backchanneling royal quid pro quos with
                incarcerated cronies, 
who plunged themselves into meaningless analysis
                searching for covfefe, 
who tossed their bow tie off-camera to be recast as the peak of
                Broadcast Urinalism & pissed out Eternities of Hate
                from beneath white sheets for the next generation, 
who cut off the opposition on a Texas freeway and brought
                mob rule to free and fair elections, lost, and were
                forced onto other platforms where they cried to each
                other and to their Q-Anon Jesus, 
who burned alive the hardwon stars ‘n’ bars of Pentagon
                uniforms in exchange for brand loyalty and armed
                American soldiers on armed American streets amid
                the squeal of ammonium nitrate delivery trucks & the
                sinister click of semi-automatic pitchforks, or
                committed lynchings as faith-drunk patriots from an
                Alternate Reality, 
who jumped into a Philadelphia press conference at Four
                Seasons Total Landscaping this actually happened then
                walked forgotten past the crematorium and the adult
                novelty shop in a ghostly industrial alley, not even one
                free dildo, 
who greased the wheels or ground them to a halt depending,
                gave their own twisted sperm to zombie corporate
                personhood, wallowed proudly in zero-sum politics,
                leaped on negroes, smirk-gloated unclean through the
                halls of justice, jackboot danced on the corpse of
                democracy, raised obstruction to an art form and
                subjected generations of the many to the whims of the
                few, skillful deaf to the sick, poor, voiceless and voteless
                in twisted allegiance to a party you were not invited to, 
who drilled down thru the deepstate conspiracy to the even
                deeper deepstate conspiracy to the even even deeper
                deeper deepstate conspiracy til finally falling flailing
                through the flaky crust of this our flattened earth, 
who with mere days to spare, leased 1.6 million acres of
                wildcountry for visions of wells, visions of jobs, and
                visions of irresponsible stewardship for all Eternity, 
who lost in Michigan, who lost in Wisconsin, who lost in
                Arizona, who lost in Pennsylvania, and who lost three
                times in Georgia, but still won in their own mind &
                brooded & tweeted from their Golf Course in Virginia as
                their father’s dark memory hungered only for winners, 
who fell to their knees on the Oval Office sofa, praying for
                victims of the Bowling Green massacre and illuminating
                alternative facts, 
who crashed Rudy’s party releasing the Kraken in vengeful
                wrath over Satan’s Dominion & subsequently
                presented impossible mountains of Venezuelan &
                Cuban evidence over 30,000 fraudulent votes from a
                food truck & a circus full of witless witnesses, 
who should retire to Mar-a-Lago and cultivate a life, to learn
                to laugh besides at somebody and at least get a fucking
                dog and maybe get dug by the blistering quicksilver jazz
                rage of Albert Ayler or at least Kenny G, 
who demanded martial law accusing the media & Democrats
                of stealing a free & fair election & were left with empty
                hands & sour grape cries for Civil War, 
who spilled childbrains upon the asphalt streets of Baghdad
                and subsequently presented themselves as exalted
                warriors, serving only cruelty in a madhouse massacre
                of fourteen innocents, contractors of slaughter building
                vectors of grief and mercenary impunity, 
and who were given instead the spiteful mercy of a failed
                despot, rewarder of fraud witness tampering tax eva-
                sion influence peddling conspiracy pimping assault &
                murder, but most of all, loyalty, 
who in humorless protest overturned exactly zero election
                results, dreaming nightly of electoral coups, 
returning again & again to the concrete mirage of fake ballots
                cast & recast by millions of dead Communist immi-
                grants & calling for the madman doom of a new
                election to be held at gunpoint, 
Keystone State’s, Arizona’s and Wisconsin’s voting laws
                bickered & parsed by those with an eye on 2024,
                rocking the base, tipping the scales, and sharpening
                the flagpoles of foaming patriots, dreaming of a night-
                mare of lynched bodies tried & convicted by mob
                rule, 
who fucked up fucked with and fucked their way up the
                White House ladder, drunk, packing & unelectable,
                grabbing the ill-timed notebook and grabbing ass and
                grabbing the disagreeable placard, a bully with
                opportunistic conscience, peddling influence and sound
                bites with no discernable obligation to the truth, 
america, while you are not safe i am not safe, and now
                masked & armed you stand before me unrecognizable
                in your anger fear need & utter denial – 
and who therefore left their paying friends adrift on the red
                carpets of Palm Beach, obsessed with overturning the
                tables of democracy & betrayed even by their own
                Judas VP and their former senate majority enabler, 
who dreamt of incoherent revolution, briefly suspending time
                and storming the slightly opened gates, enabled by
                elected insurrectionists and feeling loved & special by
                their savior of the twisted cross, coming in peace &
                bullet-proof vests while gunning for traitors & satanic
                opposition & indulging in the celebratory tantrum
                dance of the Angry White Man 
to smash the test tubes of this Our Great Experiment, with jack-
                boot echoes in once-hallowed halls springing from
                dogwhistle call-to-arms, shameless heavy-duty zip tie
                seeking someone they did not vote for & leaving behind
                the viral rumor of roasted nuts, 
the grifter and his marks, over 74 million strong, laying down
                a reality show for the ages, a ratings coup for the eyeball
                farmers and a little death for our collective humanity, 
then shrinking before our very eyes in the hot piss glow of a
                spotlight cursed & craved, whispering ghost strains of a
                farewell song forever noteless unsacred catalyst for so
                much of America’s naked suffering & perfect flawed
                vessel for entire universes where heart does not matter 
with the absolute heart of a once-great nation butchered on the
                altar of their own quenchless ego, may they live on in
                irrelevance for a thousand years. 


II 

What twisted craftsman of bone and blood could revel in the
            sacrifice of his own creation gutted upon the
            blasphemous altar of self-reverence? 
Nebro!  Demiurge!  Fool!  Rebel!  Expelled from the Fullness to
            bask in mirrored adulation!  Depriving his children of
            The Ultimate Spark!  Dousing Holy Thirst with the
            brackish water of forgetfulness! 
Nebro!  Nebro!  Pretender to Greatness Nebro!  Nebro the
            arrogant!  Vengeful Nebro!  Nebro the flawed creator of
            this flawed world! 
Nebro the pridefully ignorant!  Nebro the lion-headed snake-
            child of Chaos, Nebro the corrupted false-father!  Nebro
            whose unflinching demand for loyalty is itself a
            betrayal!  Nebro the deceiving redeemer! 
Nebro who would wall-in the Infinite!  Nebro whose blood
            flows without heart pumping!  Nebro whose fingers
            lack the finishing touch!  Nebro who’s puffed chest is
            always hollow!  Nebro with willfully deaf ears to the
            harmony that resonates fully without mass! 
Nebro who is blind to universes beyond the breath of his
            atmosphere!  Nebro whose scaled forgeries demand
            endless devotion!  Nebro who dreams of the vengeance
            before the betrayal!  Nebro the sower of empty seeds!
            Nebro the reaper of a barren garden! 
Nebro whose love is bestowed with conditions!  Nebro
            whose spirit never becomes fully manifest!  Nebro
            whose wealth reeks of Ponzi alchemy!  Nebro whose
            fate is but humbling reabsorbtion into the unseen!
            Nebro whose name is, sadly, not unpronounceable! 
Nebro who in loneliness begat creation!  Nebro and his ToyBox
            of wonders!  Nebro the mere reflection!  Nebro mated
            with his own madness!  Cast away and visionless Nebro! 
Nebro who entered the garden uninvited!  Nebro the luminous
            dark shadow obscuring consciousness!  Nebro the
            abandoned child jealous father!  Living in the dream of
            Nebro!  Longing for the self-generating light! 
Nebro!  Nebro!  corrupted offerings!  warped cathedrals!
            distorted hymns!  suppressed gospels!  demonic
            minions!  spectral acolytes!  the maker and the made!
            devout mockeries!  holy forgeries! 
They stared in awe at the skewed perfection of Nebro!
            matter, form, density, time!  the lush field of corporeal
            distraction!  cloaking the divine infinite which is
            everywhere about us! 
Surviving!  attracting!  acquiring!  controlling!  do-ing
            be-ing! the whole experience-ing of exist-ing!
Dreams!  aspirations!  yearnings!  gnawing hungers!  all side-
            effects of his unholy counterfeit separation!
Break through!  beyond the canopy!  beyond the lack!  Beyond
            the given perception!  immunity from the fire!  Vision
            and resurrection!  from banishment to liberation to
            transcendence!  Fuck Nebro and his brimstone
            tantrums!  the true god is no cannibal!
Fly away now, fly away!  We’ve seen enough!  Barricaded
            democracy!  freedom behind fences!  They slipped out
            the back!  They headed south for the winter!  To
            emptiness!  fired!  this bitter pill!  this malignant
            footnote!  into the past! 

 

III 

George Floyd! I’m with you in Minneapolis
            where for eight minutes and 46 seconds, we cannot
            breathe 
I’m with you in Brunswick
            where, for jogging while Black, we get hunted down
            for sport by a box of crackers 
I’m with you in Buffalo
            where we are told that we tripped and fell, while
            blood flows freely from our head and the RoboCops
            go marching marching on 
I’m with you at a Taco Bell Drive-Thru in Vallejo
            where had we known it was our Last Supper
            we would have fallen asleep at a Burger King 
I’m with you in Louisville
            where we are shot eight times on a botched warrant,
            but hey – accidents will happen 
I’m with you in Oakland
            where we are boogaloo ambushed as uniformed
            casualties of the race war, while our Top Cop still
            thinks the real enemy is the anti-Fascist 
I’m with you in Dayton
            because even insane people are guaranteed their
            Second Amendment rights 
I’m with you on the shores of the Rio Grande
            face down next to our beautiful baby girl 
I’m with you in El Paso
            where by the time we realize those were not
            firecrackers, it is too late 
I’m with you in Istanbul
            a mere journalist, dismembered 
I’m with you in San Juan
            where we’re mopping up what’s left of our lives with a
            single sacred roll of the quicker picker upper 
I’m with you in Las Vegas
            where lead rains down upon Mandalay Bay and we
            laugh like crisis actors waiting for a check from
            George Soros 
I’m with you in Charlottesville
            where careening metal makes us fly like bowling pins,
            and where he pleads guilty, but not nearly guilty enough 
I’m with you in San Antonio
            where we ride in on eternity’s darkness, taking our last
            breath together in search of a better life 
I’m with you on the Portland MAX
            bleeding out for the hijabs of total strangers 
I’m with you in Roger Ailes’ office
            vomiting into his wastepaper basket
            clubbed by some good people 
I’m with you in Berkeley
            watching some good cops as they watch us getting
            clubbed by some good people 
I’m with you in Kenosha
            where for seven times our three young children
            get to watch us getting shot in the back 
I’m with you in Afghanistan
            where the Mother of all Bombs killed no civilians
            except us 
I’m with you in New York City
            where our last thoughts came in a ventilator crying
            for our mothers along with only 400,000 other 
I'm with you in Michigan
            where we almost got kidnapped by patriots for daring
            to close the gymnasiums 
I’m with you in Columbus
            where our keys are in the door and we are on the floor
            with blood with sandwiches with three shots to the back 
And I’m with you in Columbus
            again 
I’m with you in Our Nation's Capitol,
            dying in service to an extinguishing ideal 
I’m with you in every burned-out Church & Synagogue,
            & every shot-up school, house party & dance hall, every
            emergency room, meat locker & morgue, where in my
            dreams, through smoke & bullet holes, through my final
            longing for your voice your touch your very smell, you
            wipe away my tears and convince me that someday every
            thing is gonna be all right.  

 

FOOTNOTE TO (my)HOWL 

Wholly Holey! Wholly Holey Whole Hole! Holy Hole! Holy!
            Holy Hole! Wholly Holy Holey Hole! 
The planet is holey! The spirit is holey! Black skin is holey!
            White skin is holey! Brown skin is holey! Red skin is
            holey! Yellow skin is holey! Green skin is holey! Blue
            skin is holey! All skin is holey! No skin is holey!
Everything is wholly holey! everybody’s wholly holey! in every
            heart everywhere, there are holy, holy holes! an eternity
            in four years!  a Sucker born every sacred minute! 
The anarchist’s as holey as the storm trooper!  the politician’s
            as holey as the soulless unnamed PACs are holey! 
The aching thumbs are holey the latent live-streams are holey
            the thirsty ears are holey the on-line tip jars are holey!
            Holey Sally Yates!  Holey Preet Bharara!  Holey Christine
            Blasey Ford!  Holey Walter Schaub Jr!  Holey Marie
            Yovanovitch!  Holey Lieutenant Colonel Alexander
            Vindman!  Holey Dr. Anthony Fauci!  Holey Coach
            Aaron Feis!  Holey the unknown casualties of politics
            after midnight and off the clock!   Holey the awesome
            and horrible singular reality!
Holey whistleblower Edward Snowden!  Holey journalist Julian
            Assange!  Holey patriot Chelsea Manning! 
Holey the latent stutterstep jamnation!  Holy the fucking Zoom
            Apocalypse!  Holy the distanced drummers as they
            groove in 13/8 bongos & forgiveness & legal marijuana! 
Holey the solitudes of the ICU and the meatlocker morgues!
            Holey the agony of the 6-feet untouchables!  Holey the
            stinking masks and streets of discarded rubber gloves! 
Holey the deepstate multitudes!  Holey the vast flocks of
            libtards and sheeple!  Holey the flaming passions of
            low-information zealotry!  Who digs The Confederacy
            IS The Confederacy!
Holey Tulsa Holey Phoenix Holey Tampa Holey Winston &
            Salem Holey Henderson Holey Johnstown Holey Des
            Moines Holey Greenville Holey Macon Holey Reno
            Holey Las Vegas Holey Pensacola Holey Allentown
            Holey Omaha Holey Kenosha Holey Bullhead City!
Holey time holey life holey family holey relationship holey
            cohort holey precious routine and schedule holey
            expectations holey the crumbling kingdom of Nebro! 
Holey the heart holey the mind holey the feelings holy intuition
            holey knowledge beyond training holey spontaneous
            knowing holey the wholly holy self and the wholly holy
            holey vision and holey the incomprehensible void! 
Holey the eternal extra brilliant flame of our wholly holy holy
            birthright to be whole!  

 

Sausalito, 2021

Ian Dogole