i have seen the best minds of my generation cowering in cafes,
sipping cold brew, frantically breathing, while they still can.
those ecstatic typists, jazzed, broken, endangered, and unaware
who trade ginger and sell roots while urban structures still stand
buying focus and forgetfulness,
abstract freedom found in screens, owned by corpses of collectives and corporations

whose plugged in minds burst and bubble with memory structures and pointers to a void,
laying bricks for the great mechanical edifice.
who type faster now, crying in a quiet, numb, neutered sort of way
harmonizing with the other strung up souls,
they are consumed by art, by its promises and doubts

who quench their fears with homegrown needles, hoping to hit arteries.
who revel in mechanical sanctity, divested of their own.
who forget secrets each day, re-meeting with each blackened sip.
who cling to shreds of liberalism, once discarded for black-red wet dreams

who crave that queer, blessed unrest
that humming, buzzing air that keeps them marching
and makes them more alive than the others.

whose paranoid fits leave them backwards on chairs, facing broken cameras and torn-up curtains.
who worship under the blinding, burning lights.
who chew on bitter chalk, dry up, cease skinning thoughts, voice ripping fantasies.
who push it down their throats, trying to relish in the salt.

whose agony forced them through splintering wooden doors, into the cafe lights.
who lust, feel dead but do it anyway, smoldering in chiaroscuro.
who see one another by curse-marks on foreheads, hands, and necks.

who yearn for her unclean kosher body, born broken, piercing, demonettes, and can't bear it.
who find themselves as failed men, deluded and reshaped.
who lean closer, pretending not to weaken at the sight of her typing hands
or crumble at the sight of its eyespots and tattooed freckles.
who whisper ballads, two-part soliloquies of ecstasy through hours lived and slept.

who walk onto grass, away from the light
finding the deepest darkness between buildings
fingering on park benches and in alleyways
shrieking and moaning, pierced by silver and peachwood
squeezing chitin and porcelain, rend the flesh from their skin.

who twirl and pretend, gaze longingly, skating down cobbled streets
to find themselves at train stops, with dreams of wildflowers and rusted boats.