i wrote this poem to be part of the altoIDs zine. i intervened allen ginsberg's howl poem to talk about the state of [in]security in new york these days.

the poem reads:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked

Surveilled by cameras 24/7 without questioning the eyes placed on them.

Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night

Being asked to identify themselves if their movements were different

Or their skin not pale enough.

Who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge

With tapped cell phones and enveloped in suspicion.

A lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon

Paranoid and fearful.

With the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

With their lives controlled by the ubiquitous god of watch and their thoughts and dreams accounted for.