I saw the best minds of my generation fueled by madness,
dieting, obese, hysterical, naked,
dragging themselves through the streets at sunset
looking for an angry fix,
red-eyed searching for cheap breakfast at dawn*,
refusing to wear time handcuffed to their wrists,
maintaining it instead at a safe distance
in their pocketed connection to anybody, any time,
from anywhere they pleased,
feeling a panic rush of disconnectedness
without their daily doses of real-time communication and texts,
expressing themselves through icons,
mixing, borrowing, concocting languages,
programming websites, constantly checking their emails,
typing, recording, interacting screen to screen,
dragging, clicking, scrolling, copy-pasting,
designing logos, loops, ergonomic-mouse-pads,
marketing products, jingles, addictions,
engineering environmentally friendly great-mileage gasoline cars,
regularly publishing their ranting thoughts to the world,
instantaneously sharing still images and video images,
eager to fill the void,
connecting and reconnecting to each other,
redefining network, kinship, relationships,
loving indiscriminately open, possessively closed,
fucking the hell out of each other drenched in canned whipped cream,
sweating, drinking instant peach-flavored iced tea lemonade,
breaking gender boundaries, flirting with pain and pleasure,
teasing death, spreading AIDS,
digesting and throwing up easy-access porn,
buying vibrating dildos at the corner sex shop,
accusing each other of frigidity, promiscuity,
fear of commitment, playing hard to get,
making statements with their t-shirts,
recycling, donating, giving blood,
grouping up, joining together, and
labeling, unlabeling and relabeling each other
in an eternal quest to define themselves,
refusing to think about yesterday or tomorrow,
stretching today,
rebelling, non-conforming, protesting,
throwing rocks,
writing poetry and history,
reading science fiction, magical realism, manuals,
imagining Middle-Earth and Mordor,
and "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....",
taking their chances, rolling dice,
roleplaying, videogaming, watching the World Cup,
laughing out loud, screaming at the top of their lungs,
exploring alternative lifestyles and altered states of consciousness,
with or without drugs,
making music, coming up with options, giving birth,
choosing, defending, condoning,
abortion, marriage, bombs,
migrating, tasting, beginning,
ending, cleansing, renewing,
backpacking through this shrunken globalized world,
reclaiming
running away from and searching for home,
shrugging, risking, jumping without a safety net,
gambling with their life Russian-roulette style,
betting on their chances that life will smile at them
through unexpected karmic outcomes if they just flow,
recreating post-new age modern versions of ancient spirituality,
skinny-dipping, rejecting dogma,
fiddling with yoga, evolution, quantum physics, thealogy and the gaia hypothesis,
fighting
going to work from 8 to 5 stoned, daydreaming about being their own boss,
drinking warmed down foreign beer,
listening to watered down world music,
consuming Walmart bought organic food,
dealing, buying, selling, legal and illegal drugs
in the hidden backway alleys and at the sky-scraping glass-windowed offices,
having to shave every morning to conform to the conventional work policies,
moonlighting as dragqueens, denying it,
alternating shortcuts with pleasure walks,
fighting through a digital reality saturated in dualities,
claiming and indulging in their right to be gods.
* Italics from Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.
