Thursday, December 01, 2005

From "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg

hi folks-- here's a bongo exceprt from "Howl"-- in the biblical Old Testament, there's a passage where a prophet blasts the ancient jews for sacrificing their children to Moloch, an Assyrian (i think) god of war. "you shall not pass your children through the fire for moloch", he says.

here, of course, he's talking about the modern world, though.

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind! Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels!
Crazy in Moloch!

4 comments:

Quitmoanez said...

Don't delete, cool shit.

Krahn said...

Thats the best poetry I've ever heard!! Why in the name of Moloch would you delete it? Copyright? I guarentee no one will ever notice or care.

Krahn said...

Its like punk rock petry. Its something that i feel i can understand and relate too. I think its because the language he use is timeless. It sounds like th eKoran and the old testament."Moloch whose fingers are ten armies". Ilove it.

D.Macri said...

I don't question to discourage. I am trying to fine tune my own (and maybe our) concept of the hierarchy of art. Would "My favorite" suit the purpose as well as "best"? It wold leave more room for individual evaluation maybe. I dunno, I'm as full of contradictions as anyone, in fact I might be the best at it.