Howling Monkeys

Last week much was being made of the fiftieth anniversary of Alan Ginsberg's poem, Howl. Having never taken the time to read it, I decided to see what all the fuss was about.

OK, now I've read it.

It annoys me when folks get their shorts in a knot over bothersome situations of their own concoction. It seems to me that Mr. Ginsberg and his compatriots might have lived life a bit less recklessly, and thus saved the need for carrying on so. Being somewhat irked at his ravings, I decided to introduce his cast to the twenty-first century. Herewith, too many words of my own.

2006

I

I have seen a generation of howling wastrels, madmen tearing at their own scabrous countenances, frothing and writhing in ecstasies of self induced loathing & petty malcontent,

gluttonous spendthrifts greedily ogling the remnants of yesterday's devoured carcasses, wolfishly demanding ever increasing attention while urgently and parsimoniously berating honest stewards of thought and action,

who eat the bones of charity and suck the marrow from virtue in the name of tolerance and paste crude stick figures cavorting in portentous license over long dusty memories of freedom past,

who feverishly invent sordid wallows of cruel malice and drudge to bind the future with the ill conceived git of failure & misery while boastfully beating their chests in primitive mockery and sallow minded pride,

who vomit putrid swellings of unfettered self and demand tribute for the long decayed failure of iconic corpses,

who stumble in the blindfolded midnight of twisted logic and callous rhetoric, hollow shells of humanity denying their own source and sustenance,

who gnash at honor and gape at propriety with the unflinching eye of callow empiricism, secure in a sinecure of personal ignorance,

while declaiming their ascendancy in thought and wisdom as though they had themselves strung the spangled heaven together and cast it abroad with their own hand and caused it all to whirl and glow through the ages like some giant sparkler burning, burning, burning and popping with bejeweled colors and monstrous gaseous clouds and whizzing comets and outer spiral arms flung wide in a universal embrace,

with no thought for the consequence of truncated reasoning, arrogantly whispering to the future of their own abbreviated learning as though three score and ten years were long enough to encompass the entirety of earthly knowledge, crammed in to a too tight pair of shoes, pinching and squeaking as they limp down the corridors of history,

empty husks, vainglorious motes, puffed up tatters of shoulder standing charlatans, elbowing one another aside for the next grant, cheek to jowl at the trough and squealing their dismay as another crowds them aside for the most trivial offal to be gulped down and passed out as a shining example for humanity to behold and marvel at,

titans of credit, titans of governmental grist wheels, titans of human misery, titans of microscopic excess, trading and selling human suffering in an endless chain of make work effort, plotting & planning the next fiscal year's profits, searching for the remotest sliver at which to grasp and clutch, fists clenched too tightly to open to even their own distress,

who grimly trudge in search of the next slave to make, the next soul to ensnare, the next havoc to wreak, squint eyed, hunch shouldered, cold hearted in soul and spirit and purpose, able to trade an ounce of example for a pound of fame,

whose larders overflow with hoarded rust and treasured dust and guarded lust, while interest accrues in compounding fractures of mind and soul,

empty bowls, dry springs, withered vines, lost in a desert of mangled intent, searching without hope of finding, but content to blaze trails of futility & frustration,

these call themselves all names, answer all calls, name all answers, and depend on the benighted condition of all to be certain of their own condition,

having no faith save the faith of unbelief they steal certainty from those in search of hope and exchange solace for the nihilistic ashes of self destruction.

II

What siren of seduction and enticement has latched its claws into their souls and leadened their hearts to all but more of anything?

Mammon! Profit! Filthy lucre! Unquenchable gain! Desire for all but contentment.  Unrequited demand for additional everything to be tallied and added and amassed until the ledger sheets are black with the crabbed scribblings of entries beyond accounting.

Mammon! Mammon! The Franc Yen for a Dollar. The percolating, seething urge to forge chains of ever increasing entrapment for bargain basement prices.

Mammon! Whose glint has blinded the visionary, whose power has emasculated the strong, whose easy credit terms have bound the consumer

Mammon! The god of organized religion, the mandate of the corporation, the foundation of trusts, the extortioners rudder that guides the ships of state, the love of which is the root of all evil.