i have seen the best minds of my generation cowering in coffeehouses, maddened by 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,
who hide themselves in art, in 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, meeting again with each blackened sip and retold open lie.
who cling to shreds of liberalism, once discarded for red and black 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, smoldering in chiaroscuro.
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 and terror forced them through splintering wooden doors, into the cafe lights.
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, trying not to weaken at the sight of her typing hands
or be crumbled by 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.