I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness starving hysterical naked dragging themselves through negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning ancient heavenly connection to starry dynamo in machinery night who poverty and tatters hollow-eyed high sat up smoking supernatural darkness cold-water flats floating across tops cities contemplating jazz bared their brains Heaven under El Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated passed universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas Blake-light tragedy among scholars war were expelled from academies crazy & publishing obscene odes windows skull cowered unshaven rooms underwear money wastebaskets listening Terror wall got busted pubic beards returning Laredo a belt marijuana New York ate fire paint hotels or drank turpentine Paradise Alley death purgatoried torsos night after dreams drugs waking nightmares alcohol cock endless balls incomparable blind shuddering cloud lightning mind leaping toward poles Canada Paterson illuminating all motionless world Time between Peyote solidities halls backyard green tree cemetery dawns wine drunkenness over rooftops storefront boroughs teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light sun moon vibrations roaring winter dusks Brooklyn ashcan rantings kind king light mind chained subways ride Battery holy Bronx benzedrine until noise wheels children brought them down mouth-wracked battered bleak brain drained brilliance drear Zoo sank submarine Bickford’s floated out stale beer afternoon desolate Fugazzi’s crack doom hydrogen jukebox talked continuously seventy hours park pad bar Bellevue museum Brooklyn Bridge lost battalion platonic conversationalists jumping stoops off escapes windowsills Empire State moon yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts memories anecdotes eyeball kicks shocks hospitals jails wars whole intellects disgorged total recall seven days nights brilliant eyes meat Synagogue cast pavement vanished into nowhere Zen Jersey leaving trail ambiguous picture postcards Atlantic City Hall suffering Eastern sweats Tangerian bone-grindings migraines China junk-withdrawal Newark’s furnished room wandered around midnight railroad yard wondering where go went no broken hearts lit cigarettes boxcars racketing snow lonesome farms grandfather studied Plotinus Poe St. John Cross telepathy bop kabbalah because cosmos instinctively vibrated feet Kansas loned it Idaho seeking visionary indian angels thought they only mad when Baltimore gleamed ecstasy jumped limousines Chinaman Oklahoma impulse streetlight smalltown rain lounged hungry Houston jazz sex soup followed Spaniard converse about America Eternity hopeless task so took ship Africa disappeared volcanoes Mexico behind nothing but shadow dungarees lava ash poetry scattered fireplace Chicago reappeared West Coast investigating FBI shorts big pacifist sexy dark skin passing incomprehensible leaflets burned cigarette holes arms protesting narcotic tobacco haze Capitalism distributed Supercommunist pamphlets Union Square weeping undressing while sirens Los Alamos wailed down Wall Staten Island ferry also wailed broke crying white gymnasiums naked trembling before other skeletons bit detectives neck shrieked delight policecars committing crime own wild cooking pederasty intoxication howled knees subway dragged roof waving genitals manuscripts let be fucked ass saintly motorcyclists screamed joy blew blown those human seraphim sailors caresses Caribbean love balled morning evenings rosegardens grass public parks cemeteries scattering semen freely whomever come may hiccuped endlessly trying giggle wound sob partition Turkish Bath blond angel came pierce sword loveboys three old shrews fate one eyed shrew heterosexual dollar that winks womb does sit her snip intellectual golden threads craftsman’s loom copulated ecstatic insatiate bottle sweetheart package candle fell bed continued along floor hall ended fainting wall vision ultimate cunt eluding last gyzym consciousness sweetened snatches million girls sunset red prepared sweeten snatch sunrise flashing buttocks barns lake went whoring Colorado myriad stolen night-cars N.C. secret hero these poems cocksman Adonis Denver—joy memory his innumerable lays empty lots diner backyards moviehouses’ rickety rows mountaintops caves gaunt waitresses familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings especially gas-station solipsisms johns hometown alleys too faded vast sordid movies shifted woke sudden Manhattan picked basements hung-over heartless Tokay horrors Third Avenue iron dreams stumbled unemployment offices walked shoes full blood snowbank docks waiting door East River open room steam-heat opium created great suicidal dramas apartment cliff-banks Hudson wartime blue floodlight heads shall crowned laurel oblivion lamb stew imagination digested crab muddy bottom rivers Bowery wept romance pushcarts onions bad music boxes breathing bridge rose build harpsichords lofts coughed sixth Harlem flame tubercular sky surrounded orange crates theology scribbled rocking rolling lofty incantations which yellow stanzas gibberish cooked rotten animals lung heart tail borsht tortillas dreaming pure vegetable kingdom plunged trucks egg threw watches ballot Eternity outside Time alarm clocks every day next decade cut wrists times successively unsuccessfully gave forced antique stores growing cried alive innocent flannel suits Madison amid blasts leaden verse tanked-up clatter regiments fashion nitroglycerine shrieks fairies advertising mustard gas sinister intelligent editors run drunken taxicabs Absolute Reality Bridge this actually happened away unknown forgotten ghostly daze Chinatown soup alleyways firetrucks not even free beer sang despair window filthy Passaic leaped negroes cried street danced wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records nostalgic European 1930s German finished whiskey groaning bloody toilet moans ears blast colossal steamwhistles barreled highways past journeying each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch Birmingham incarnation drove crosscountry seventytwo find if had you he journeyed Denver died back Denver waited vain watched brooded finally now is heroes cathedrals praying salvation breasts soul illuminated its hair second crashed jail impossible criminals charm reality hearts sweet blues Alcatraz retired cultivate habit Rocky Mount tender Buddha Tangiers boys Southern Pacific black locomotive Harvard Narcissus Woodlawn daisychain grave demanded sanity trials accusing radio hypnotism left insanity hands hung jury potato salad CCNY lecturers Dadaism subsequently presented granite steps madhouse shaven harlequin speech suicide demanding instantaneous lobotomy given instead concrete void insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong amnesia humorless protest overturned symbolic table resting briefly catatonia years later truly bald except wig blood tears fingers visible madman wards madtowns East Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s Greystone’s foetid bickering echoes soul solitude-bench dolmen-realms dream life nightmare bodies turned stone as heavy mother ****** fantastic book flung closed 4 A.M. telephone slammed reply emptied piece mental furniture paper twisted wire hanger closet imaginary hopeful little hallucination— ah Carl are safe am safe you’re really animal time— therefore ran icy obsessed flash alchemy use ellipsis catalogue variable measure vibrating plane dreamt made incarnate gaps Space images juxtaposed trapped archangel between 2 visual joined elemental verbs set noun dash consciousness together sensation Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus recreate syntax poor prose stand speechless shaking shame rejected yet confessing conform rhythm head bum beat unknown putting here what might say time reincarnate clothes goldhorn band America’s love eli lamma sabacthani saxophone cry shivered absolute poem butchered good eat thousand years. II What sphinx cement aluminum bashed skulls imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans unobtainable dollars! Children stairways! Boys sobbing armies! Old men parks! Nightmare Moloch loveless! Mental judger men! prison! crossbone soulless jailhouse Congress sorrows! whose buildings judgment! war! stunned governments! machinery! running money! fingers ten breast cannibal dynamo! ear tomb! windows! skyscrapers long like Jehovahs! factories croak fog! smoke-stacks antennae crown cities! oil stone! banks! specter genius! sexless hydrogen! name Mind! whom lonely! Angels! Crazy Cocksucker Lacklove manless entered early! without body! frightened me natural ecstasy! abandon! Wake Light streaming sky! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! cocks! monstrous bombs! They backs lifting Heaven! Pavements trees radios tons! city exists everywhere us! Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone American river! Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! boatload sensitive bullshit! Breakthroughs! flips crucifixions! flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ screams suicides! Minds! loves! Mad generation! rocks Time! Real laughter all! eyes! yells! bade farewell! roof! solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down street!