I may as well be Ginsberg if that’s just how I should be viewed.

Perhaps I should shock the establishment with the odd profanity

dropped here and there and suggest that the taking of Peyote

might ease the conscious and open the mind

to generation upon generation

that has been taken for granted, abused and pissed upon

from every angle in the name of all things superficial.

 

I may as well be hung for causing outrage where there was none

and believe me when I have hurt myself a thousand times

rather than think of the injustice I could do to another.

I would sooner tie the exclusive knot myself, you do not even have

to dirty your clean hands on the fraying, decaying rope

and I absolve you of everything.

 

Ginsberg would no doubt shrug it off, take flight and cuss

and scream abuse via the use of well placed pen

and shoot heroin, or least drink a glass of something special

and would certainly go and bugger about for a while in what ever

you decide is a cess pool.

 

But no! I have sat here for hours, staring at nothing.

Because I am not Ginsberg, I am not Kerouac,

I cannot disguise a contempt and loathing with the pithy

and genius of Auden and nor can I find myself to hate you.

What is the point of hate? I will not be consumed by the feeling,

It’s bad enough that my body is wracked with the understanding

that it despises itself more each day. I will not add to that inadequacy.

 

I distance myself instead, I retreat into the snail’s shell

and take a birch in which to beat myself forever with, for it leaves a better

mark than any knife. For you are not the first

to shout for me to be burned alive at the stake. The irony being

this time it’s not my fault.

 

Oh to be like Ginsberg and slip quietly into a chemical abyss,

But perhaps that’s what I’m doing, for I do not mock you,

I never will.

It’s out of me, that I take the piss.

 

Ian D. Hall. 2014