Howl

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness

starving hysterical nakedAngelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection

to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and hollow-eyed and high

sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats,

floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing

obscene odes on the windows of the skullLost battalion of platonic conversationalists

who ate fire in paint hotels

and purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams,

with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and endless balls

who burned cigarette holes in their arms

protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism who walked all night with their shoes full of blood

waiting for a door in the East River to open to

a room full of steamheat and opium,

under the blue floodlight of the moon

... and their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion.


Photos: Louis Garrel by Hedi Slimane
Poem: Extract from 'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg