who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated
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
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish
amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality
