Monthly Archives: October 2011
“Howl” by Allen Ginsberg updated for the Occupation
Howl
Updated by Breezy Kiefair
For my friends, fans, and fiends
I
I saw the best minds of my generation valiantly struggling to destroy the madness, starving hysterical educated,
dragging themselves through the occupied streets at dawn looking for a fix to their righteous anger,
angelheaded hempsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating class warfare,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El train and saw First Nation spirit guides pale and staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with perscribed narcotic hazed eyes.. desperatley trying to conquer physical pain inside the dream of Ginsberg’s school whilst Debting Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war and peace,
whose doctors with the stroke of a pen excluded them from the academies for weak immune response & too many hospital visits and too much time off required…… and so retired to being a ghost in the machine publishing controversial essays on the benefits of cannabis therapy for the sick.
who cowered in rotten canvas tents in long dirty clothes, burning their resin, paying their land bills and heating canned goods on a candle in the absence of an indoor stove whilst listening to the Terror echoing still today and through the years,
who got busted for their sacramental pipes returning through Maine with a story of hope for Cleveland, Michigan and Colorado.
who grew fire out back of low end hotels in their RV or drank resin tincture on Paradise Mesa, dug in until death, conditions and the cold of hell in their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, cannabis and lack and endless wails,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping towards poles of Canada & Mexico and the whole prohibition world, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote spirits haunting the land of no halls, backyard green tree cemetery falls, canna-bliss blowing over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teapotparty joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusk’s of the valley, ashcan rantings and kind cannabis on compassion makes you light of mind,
who chained themselves to their occupation. for the endless ride from park to holy jail on love and hope until the noise of mace and sticks brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the fear light of the memory of the dead man from the Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of the capitol building and when riot police came floated out and sat through the stale beer/coffee house dawn in desolate 16th Street, reading the crack of doom scroll across their social media news feeds.
who posted information continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Twin Towers onto of the moon
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, gifts for the Sacred place just cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen horizon mirage above reality’s plane. leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of the beauty of the world.
Who found it better suffering sweats and bone-grindings and migraines of junk-withdrawal in an MMJ state’s bleak furnished room, with the comfort of a pipe in hand and the knowledge they could use as much of this as their pain required and not worry about an unintended death.
who wandered around and around at midnight in the occupied parks wondering where to go, and remained, leaving no broken hearts except for their own, and even it, scrawled across a bit of cardboard and peacefully expressed for all of the anger and stress madness within their breasts.
who lit hash filled cigarettes at truck-stops truck-stops truck-stops racketing through snow toward lonesome freedom Maine in grandfather night,
who studied St. Jude, astral projection, and bop kabbalah, Rastafarian, the Egyptian book of the dead, the epic of Gilgamesh, and more because the universe instinctively vibrated at their feet in Nebraska.
who longed through the streets of Ohio seeking visionary First Nation guides who were visions themselves
who thought they were only mad when they have every right to be mad and their righteous indignation gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in pig cars on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight small-town blizzard Maine,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through ‘Mosa seeking meds or heat or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to the safety of the horse-lands,
who disappeared into the underground leaving nothing behind but the shadow of dungarees and the rocks we gathered for the house and ash of my heart scattered on the land, self sustainable American dream in ashes because I cant fund it beyond the empty land, and even that is for sale for survival’s sake.
who reappeared on the East Coast investigating the medicinal cannabis programs in other states in purple pure gift scarf and with big pacifist eyes sexy in their pale skin passing out information and stories in exchange for housing like a true bard of old.
who cold turkey-ed cigarettes repeatedly protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism (and picked them back up again in PTSD coping mechanism to throw them back down again and again),
who screamed in favor of the Cannabis haze of capitalism…. who distributed Congressional Supercommittee petitions in Universal Online square weeping and exposing the secrets of their hearts while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the severe weather sirens also wailed,
who broke down crying in protest parks as if they had been left naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,
who used their whit to strike at detectives and shrieked with delight in police-cars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and duty to protest.
who howled on their knees in the igloo and were dragged off the sidewalks waving signs and screaming valid points,
who let themselves be maced in the face, and screamed with joy for truth exposed,
who believed in equality for all, caresses and hints of unconditional love
who occupied in the morning and in the evenings and sent messages to delegation rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their opinions freely to whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a public forum when a small & vulnerable woman came to hear their wailing song.
who lost their loves to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,
who shared themselves ecstatic and insatiable and fell off the net, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate hope and prosperity eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, and a lighting a fire of self sustainability desire
who sweetened the minds of a million hearts trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but were prepared to sweeten the image of the sunrise, flashing truths under sad eyes and naked in the soul,
who went out traveling through Colorado in myriad stolen rides, A.G. secret hero of these poems, poet and activist of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable fingers given to censoring conformists and cigarettes shared with corrupted youth in Naropa writing work shop breaktime day. I sing to you on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside debates & especially quiet help in dreams.
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden nightmare, and picked themselves up out of heart sore despair… not drunk yet hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Wall Street’s iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,
who walked all night with their souls full of dread on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the 1% to open to a room full of steamheat and and lack of worry,
who created great suicidal dramas on the appeasement of bankers of the Stock market under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of the Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build revolutions in their parks, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the acid rain skies surrounded by orange crates of theology wishing for wide open spaces,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, rambling and unpublishable without a proofreader’s eye
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for a banana,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next century,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,
who were tortured alive in their innocent flannel suits on social security disability amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, your government docs say your too sick to work, your government says your life is worth $17.42 a day. Make that work you sick lady in the wild all on your own.
who were trapped on the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of the protests, not even one tagline
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the dream’s window, jumped in the filthy Greyhound, leaped on haters, cried all over the street, danced on broken glass pipes barefoot..
who polar bear-ed it across frozen mesa to prove a point to psychopathic husband…. smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz screamed it was 1929 again, finished the joint and still stumbled down the hall just in time for their disease to make them throw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal auditory sensitivity.
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch a widespread panic incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loaned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to the social media class,
who retired to MMJ state to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or France to teach medicine or Southern border to live cheaply or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the feds of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,
who threw Knowledge at political pundits and gave lectures on history to representatives and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with the shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous reversion to the constitution,
and who were given instead the concrete void of mainstream media, refused electricity, cold-water hydrotherapy long before the dawn, applications for protest trademark names, occupational therapy in the for of police brutality & amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic table, resting briefly in catatonia as the peaceful prepare their souls for pain.
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the corruptions and small-town censorship of infanticide in the East,
Pueblo State’s mountain views and Excelsior’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,
with bio-family finally *****, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger on the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— yet in the mind hope still remains
ah, working class, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time—
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,
whose written dreams made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel citizen in Time, unknown, yet posting here what might be left to say in time come after death,
and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
Howl
For Carl Solomon
I
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping towards poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
a lost batallion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the railway yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the universe instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving nothing behind but the shadow of dungarees and the larva and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but were prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open full of steamheat and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the appartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of the Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturerson Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with the shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,
Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,
with mother finally *****, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger on the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time—
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soulbetween 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,
and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
II
Breezy Kiefair
What Harpy of regulations bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Inequality! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Inequality! Moloch! Nightmare of Money! 1% the loveless! Mental Moloch! State controlled Media the heavy judge of men!
Class Warfare the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Super-Congress of sorrows! Wall Street whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Money for the stunned governments!
My country whose mind has become pure machinery! My Country whose blood is running money! My Country whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! My Country whose ear is an unknown and smoking tomb! My country who adopted me and is therefore my parent.
My parents whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! My parents whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! My parents whose factories dream and choke in the fog while paying down their carbon footprint as if the damage was undone! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities making my body ache!!
Moloch is My father whose love is endless oil and stone! My father whose soul is electricity and banks! My home whose poverty is the specter of genius! My home whose fate is an uncertain roller coaster based on regulations that keep shrinking my resources! Freedom’s only home now whose name is the Mind!
Moloch is My home in whom I sit lonely! My home in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Moloch! Crazy Bitch in Moloch! Lacklove and friendless in My home!
Moloch who entered and attempted to own my soul early! My home, in your information superhighway I become am a consciousness not bound so much by a disabled body! My father who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! My parents I abandon! Wake up in my country! Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! Corporate Persons! invincible house or representatives! granite senates! Corrupt lobbyists! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting their country to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American Dream river turned to flushing toilet!
Dreams! adoration! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of bill of rights constitutional BULLSHIT!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and revolutions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the the edge! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street! Were the 99%! This is what martial law looks like! As they are beaten back but do not submit.
II
What sphinx of cement and aluminium 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 judgement! 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 Jehovas! Moloch whose factories dream and choke 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! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisable suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstacies! gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!
III
Breezy Kiefair
Occupy Together! I’m with you on Wall Street
where you’re louder than I am
I’m with you in Oakland
where you must feel strange
I’m with you in Saint Louis
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I’m with you in Michigan
where you’re brother murdered a baby so you covered up the archives and put him to work as an administrative assistant.
I’m with my regulars
who pick apart and you laugh at this invisible humor
I’m with you in Denver
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I’m with you in Colorado Springs
where your traveling protester’s condition has become serious and is reported on the radio
I’m with you in my heart
where the faculties of the skull admit the worms of the senses but only in shades of pain
I’m with you in Nederland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Indica
I’m with you in Facebookland
where you sell nugs with the bodies of your nurses
I’m with you in Facebookland
where I scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of actual chess of the abyss
I’m with you in Facebookland
where you bang on the catatonic newsfeed
What’s on my mind? “the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse”
I’m with you in Facebookland
where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void
I’m with you in Facebookland
where we accuse our doctors of cruelty, insanity and plot the revolution against the bankers influence and unequal distribution of wealth..
I’m with you in Facebookland
where you will split the heavens and find the beauty where you are, resurrecting your living human freedoms from the superhuman tomb
I’m with you in Facebookland
where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the songs of their youth all saying there is hope and we rebel.
I’m with you in Facebookland
where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and whose problems won’t let us sleep
I’m with you in Facebookland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ chemtrails roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop censorship bombs the digital hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we’re free
I’m with you in Facebookland
in my dreams you drive from the story of your-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night to build a life here with me away from such woe.
III
Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland
where you’re madder than I am
I’m with you in Rockland
where you must feel strange
I’m with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I’m with you in Rockland
where you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries
I’m with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humour
I’m with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I’m with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio
I’m with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses
I’m with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
I’m with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx
I’m with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of actual pingpong of the abyss
I’m with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse
I’m with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void
I’m with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha
I’m with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb
I’m with you in Rockland
where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I’m with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep
I’m with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we’re free
I’m with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand
and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an
angel!
The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy
Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-
sady holy the unknown buggered and suffering
beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks
of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-
ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &
Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow
Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-
tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!
Related articles
- Howl (warlockasylum.wordpress.com)
- Finding Pain Relief In Cannabis (cherrygurl28.com)
- Howl, Part I – Allan Ginsburg (underpaidgenius.com)
- Can someone with a caution for possession of cannabis go on holiday to the USA? (ask.metafilter.com)
- Video: Medical marijuana field grows (video.msnbc.msn.com)
- The October 2011 Activism Activities of Breezy Kiefair (breedheenorilleykeefer.wordpress.com)
- First public reading of Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ took place 56 years ago today (dangerousminds.net)
- What Would Allen Ginsberg Think of Occupy Wall Street? (bigthink.com)
- RJ: Howl by Allen Ginsberg (mctriestowrite.wordpress.com)
- Daniel Radcliffe Could Play Allen Ginsberg In ‘Kill Your Darlings’ (moviesblog.mtv.com)
- Daniel Radcliffe to Play Poet Allen Ginsberg in ‘Kill Your Darlings’ (slashfilm.com)
- Daniel Radcliffe eyes role of Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings (guardian.co.uk)
- Daniel Radcliffe set to play Allen Ginsberg (telegraph.co.uk)
- “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg updated for the Occupation (breedheenorilleykeefer.com)
“America” by Allen Ginsberg updated for the Occupation (with Ballad of the skeletons)
“America” and “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg updated for the Occupation and “Ballad of the Skeletons” as he wrote it”
October 28, 2011
America
Breezy Kiefair
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America seventeen dollars and forty two cents October 28, 2011.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
go fuck yourself with your atom bomb, homeland security and martial law.
Go fuck yourself with your patriot act oppressing true patriots.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till my muse gives me the words.
America when will you return and be angelic? This world I live in is like a twilight zone episode of America’s greatness of yore
When will you take the wool off of your eyes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you open your eyes to the sick and dying? When will you see that we have value too? When will you correct the stress that kills disabled and working class alike?
When will you be worthy of your 99%
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you transform your spending from defense of oil to your peoples survival?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the dispensaries and get the effective medication I chose over narcotic poison with the same money Uncle Sam is happy to spend on things that make me more ill & could kill me?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
Your human histories made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
My husband has gone underground I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the wild horses let me in their circle, seems horses understand me better than people.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, I can’t afford the subscriptions and everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. It just reminds me of my murdered kid and justice miscarried..
America I feel sentimental about wildlife and national parks.
America I used to be an nerd when I was a kid and I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. While reading the free library that is the internet and sharing it with the world.
When I go to town I get supplies and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me eating libraries.
My psychoanalyst thought my logic is perfectly sound and advised me to trust it.
I WILL say whatever prayer I feel like wherever I feel like saying it. Cannabis IS a religious sacrament and a valid use of my first amendment freedom of speech and religion America the constitution is beautiful with a built in process of beautiful change.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. I am not ashamed.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Grandpa John after he came home from ‘Nam
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by the mainstream media?
I’m obsessed by the mainstream media.
I read it every day.
Its pages stare at me every time I open my computer to get some human connection.
I read it in the homeless shelters, in the basement of the Tattered Cover Bookstore,
in the basement of the NYC Greyhound station,
in social clubs for the insane in Maine,
In the greyhound station of Cleveland,
in Michigan Libraries
and on back to Denver,
to Union Station.
And I read it still out here in the wild.
Surrounded by nature at the roof of the world where I feel a bit more safe..
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Bankers are serious. Businessmen are serious. Lobbyists are serious. Movie producers are serious. Comedians are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
My country is rising against me.
I haven’t got a unemployed person’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of minds
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
99%’ers occupying my the ground.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the medicines that don’t work for me, and the GMO foods are next to go..
My ambition is to contribute to society despite the doctors saying I’m too sick for anything..
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my thoughts are as individual as his
automobiles more so if we planted hemp and made hemp oil returning to his original engine design we could stop worrying about oil.
America I will sell you all that I have just to survive.
America free Marc Emery
America save the Medical Marijuana Community & legalize
America we execute innocent too often they must not die.
America I am the 99%.
America you don’t really want to go to war.
America it’s them bad terrorists
Them terrorists them terrorists and them North Koreans. And them Terrorists.
The al Queda wants to eat us alive. The Al Queda‘s power mad. They wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Oh my precious oil, must protect the precious oil…
when we can grow an oil far better on the land that is ours & should be so free.
They wants to squash Denver. They needs a edu-ma-cation. Ther wants our
auto plants to go to Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh.. Uncle Sam need big strong workmen at a wage guaranteed to make you weak..
Hah. Them make us all work massive overtime with no overtime pay as I watched my friend get laid off today. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking at the net and social media posts of your people.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts in factories,
I tried factory work already, I’m nearsighted,chronically ill and psychologically unstable anyway.
America I’m putting my bisexual artists research obsessed shoulder to the wheel.
America
Allen Ginsberg
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they’re all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don’re really want to go to war.
America it’s them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Ballad Of The Skeletons Lyrics by: Allen Ginsberg
Said the Presidential Skeleton
I won’t sign the bill
Said the Speaker skeleton
Yes you will
Said the Representative Skeleton
I object
Said the Supreme Court skeleton
Whaddya expect
Said the Miltary skeleton
Buy Star Bombs
Said the Upperclass Skeleton
Starve unmarried moms
Said the Yahoo Skeleton
Stop dirty art
Said the Right Wing skeleton
Forget about yr heart
Said the Gnostic Skeleton
The Human Form’s divine
Said the Moral Majority skeleton
No it’s not it’s mine
Said the Buddha Skeleton
Compassion is wealth
Said the Corporate skeleton
It’s bad for your health
Said the Old Christ skeleton
Care for the Poor
Said the Son of God skeleton
AIDS needs cure
Said the Homophobe skeleton
Gay folk suck
Said the Heritage Policy skeleton
Blacks’re outa luck
Said the Macho skeleton
Women in their place
Said the Fundamentalist skeleton
Increase human race
Said the Right-to-Life skeleton
Foetus has a soul
Said Pro Choice skeleton
Shove it up your hole
Said the Downsized skeleton
Robots got my job
Said the Tough-on-Crime skeleton
Tear gas the mob
Said the Governor skeleton
Cut school lunch
Said the Mayor skeleton
Eat the budget crunch
Said the Neo Conservative skeleton
Homeless off the street!
Said the Free Market skeleton
Use ’em up for meat
Said the Think Tank skeleton
Free Market’s the way
Said the Saving & Loan skeleton
Make the State pay
Said the Chrysler skeleton
Pay for you & me
Said the Nuke Power skeleton
& me & me & me
Said the Ecologic skeleton
Keep Skies blue
Said the Multinational skeleton
What’s it worth to you?
Said the NAFTA skeleton
Get rich, Free Trade,
Said the Maquiladora skeleton
Sweat shops, low paid
Said the rich GATT skeleton
One world, high tech
Said the Underclass skeleton
Get it in the neck
Said the World Bank skeleton
Cut down your trees
Said the I.M.F. skeleton
Buy American cheese
Said the Underdeveloped skeleton
We want rice
Said Developed Nations’ skeleton
Sell your bones for dice
Said the Ayatollah skeleton
Die writer die
Said Joe Stalin’s skeleton
That’s no lie
Said the Middle Kingdom skeleton
We swallowed Tibet
Said the Dalai Lama skeleton
Indigestion’s whatcha get
Said the World Chorus skeleton
That’s their fate
Said the U.S.A. skeleton
Gotta save Kuwait
Said the Petrochemical skeleton
Roar Bombers roar!
Said the Psychedelic skeleton
Smoke a dinosaur
Said Nancy’s skeleton
Just say No
Said the Rasta skeleton
Blow Nancy Blow
Said Demagogue skeleton
Don’t smoke Pot
Said Alcoholic skeleton
Let your liver rot
Said the Junkie skeleton
Can’t we get a fix?
Said the Big Brother skeleton
Jail the dirty pricks
Said the Mirror skeleton
Hey good looking
Said the Electric Chair skeleton
Hey what’s cooking?
Said the Talkshow skeleton
Fuck you in the face
Said the Family Values skeleton
My family values mace
Said the NY Times skeleton
That’s not fit to print
Said the CIA skeleton
Cantcha take a hint?
Said the Network skeleton
Believe my lies
Said the Advertising skeleton
Don’t get wise!
Said the Media skeleton
Believe you me
Said the Couch-potato skeleton
What me worry?
Said the TV skeleton
Eat sound bites
Said the Newscast skeleton
That’s all Goodnight
Related articles
- What Would Allen Ginsberg Think of Occupy Wall Street? (bigthink.com)
- An Obscene Howl ?? (nfaa.wordpress.com)
- HOWL on screen and Ginsberg at 85 (carolinemarycrew.wordpress.com)
- Allen Ginsberg, Poetics Practicum packet, c. 1995 [pdf]. (wewhoareabouttodie.com)
Remembering a Murdered boy: Westley Thorin Keaton Roberts. Happy would-be 13th birthday 7:47pm (birth minute)
This is the pamphlet from his funeral.
Westley Was premature. this was his first day home from the hospital. â in Fairfax, Virginia. October 30, 1998
Westley and I moved to Hillsdale, Michigan where I had attended & graduated from Hillsdale High School in 1997 â in Homer, Michigan.
Here he is with his favorite rattle in the shape of a guitar.
I’m gonna stand up and start walkin soon ma… just you wait… just gotta do a few more strenght building exercises to get in shape… come on E’ore lets do it!
Westley’s 1st birthday party. he loved this toy. its a rocker with a plastic book on top. each page has different sounds on the buttons & that red paddle goes “broinggggggggg”& stays in motion for a bit every time you “broinggggggg” it… it was so cool to watch him giggle with this.
We lived between Hillsdale, Michigan and and Homer, Michigan in Southern Michigan
On May 6, 2000 Westley Thorin Keaton Roberts sustained injuries in this bathtub. He suffered a blow to the abdomen so severe it ruptured his intestines. It took him 12 hours to die. He died while I gave him CPR just after getting home from work. He was Dead on arrival. they never got a pulse.
If all works out according to plan, this will be posted on my only child’s birth minute on what would have been his 13th birthday.
I have often said that we have a word for people who loose all family members but children (widow/widower, orphan, ect) partially because of historical mortality rates of children and partially because it is a loss so horrible there just isn’t a word to describe the feeling. I will never forget you Westley. You changed me as a person for the better & for this, I am forever grateful to you.
I named my only child Westley Thorin Keaton Roberts. I agonized in research for months looking for the right name. Westley and Keaton together means ~”loosely” man from the field where the Hawks go in Gaelic. Westley was also in deference to of my I don’t know how many great(s)-uncle named Westley O’Connor who family legend says worked with the first pine-bark beetle infestations in Colorado. Thorin was for the character Thorin Oakenshield in J. R. R. Tolkien‘s book “The Hobbit” and also because his biological father had requested that “Thor” be in the name some where. The other hidden joke in Westleys’ Name will already be seen by fans of the movie “The Princess Bride” whose main character Wesley becomes “the dread pirate roberts” later on.
Westley Thorin Keaton Roberts
born 10/24/1998 7:47pm Fairfax, Virginia in Fair Oaks Hospital
murdered 05/06/2000 (finally passed late around 11:59pm) Homer, Mi
On May 6, 2000 Westley Thorin Keaton Roberts sustained injuries in a bathtub. He suffered a blow to the abdomen so severe it ruptured his intestines. It took him 12 hours to die. He died while I gave him CPR just after getting home from work. He was Dead on arrival. they never got a pulse. His death was ruled a homicide. The only person with Westley that day was my fiance. I will not say his name.
Justice miscarried (murderer acquitted on a technicality Jan/Feb 2001) Battle Creek, MI
This is a video of art I have created between March of 2009 and September 2010. It is set to a song written by a friend of mine in real life from High School after the murder of my only child, Westley Thorin Keaton Roberts.
the below link will take you to where this video was first posted on facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/v/150854724934545
On October 23, 2011, I went looking for the online link for my son’s obituary. I have seen it online in the past. It should be on this page:
If you think I am being paranoid about my kid’s obituary being erased, please view the link. Yet the little girl who was raped & murdered & her body burned a few weeks after Westley is still there….. relevant excerpt below:
April 26, 2000
Robert Keith Rice, Sr.
Robert Keith Rice, Sr., 72, of Litchfield, died Thursday, April 20, 2000, at home.
Mr. Rice was born November 21, 1927, in Northwest Township, Ohio, to Ross O. and Belva (Seely) Rice. He married Hazel I. (Coats) Dickinson January 14, 1989. She survives.
Mr. Rice had been a machinist at Adwest in Hillsdale, as well as several other area shops. He was a WWII Army veteran and enjoyed membership in a motorcycle club. Mr. Rice was an avid hunter, fisherman and woodworker.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Rice is survived by two daughters, Tresia Moon of San Bernardino, California, and Laura Ann Johnson of Litchfield; a son, Robert K. Rice, Jr. of Bronson; five stepchildren, Diane Ely of Jacksonville, Florida, Doris Isaac of Westland, Esther McPherson of Marshall, Mary Dickinson of Hillsdale and Mickey Dickinson of Homer; a sister, Mildred Crawford of Camden; 16 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by a sister.
Funeral services were held Monday, April 24, at the Camden Missionary Church, with Pastor Jeff Truex officiating. Interment followed at the Camden Cemetery.
Memorial contributions are suggested to the family.
Arrangements were handled by the St. John-White Funeral Home in Reading.
Frederick “Fritz” Lincoln
Frederick “Fritz” Lincoln, 76, of Litchfield, died Saturday, April 22, 2000, at his home.
Mr. Lincoln was born September 1, 1923, in Wayne County, to Zara Byron and Ada (Gladding) Lincoln. He owned and operated a service station in Litchfield for 17 years and was a foundry superintendent at Gale Manufacturing for more than 20 years. He was also a farmer.
Mr. Lincoln was a World War II army veteran, serving in the European Theatre, where he participated in the Normandy invasion. He received four Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart. He was a former member of the Homer American Legion, and enjoyed deer hunting, gardening and harness racing.
Survivors include a daughter, Bonnie Ament of Big Sandy, Tennessee; a son, Fred Lincoln of Reading; a companion, Betty Tervol of Litchfield; two sisters, Laura Doman of Horton and Zarena Coates of Warren; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by two brothers, two sisters and a grandson.
Funeral services were held Tuesday, April 25, at the George White Funeral Home in Litchfield, with the Rev. Clyde Wonders officiating. Interment followed in Burlington Cemetery in Calhoun County.
Memorials are suggested to the Hospice of Hillsdale County.
May 3, 2000 – No obits
May 10, 2000
Charlotte May Merica
Charlotte May Merica, 83, of Homer, died Saturday, May 6, 2000, at Branch County Health Center in Coldwater.
Mrs. Merica was born August 18, 1916, in Walcottville, Indiana, to Franklin and Wilma (Keck) Slagle. She married Marion McVee Merica July 11, 1932. He preceded her in death in 1973.
Mrs. Merica came to the Homer area in 1936. She was a homemaker, who loved to cook and sew.
Survivors include two sons, William F. Merica of Montpelier, Ohio, and Walter L. (Annabelle) Merica of Homer; three daughters, Marjorie Robinson of Homer, Mrs. George (Joyce) Stanley of Quincy, and Mrs. Eugene (Mary) Ballinger of Homer; 17 grandchildren; 33 great-grandchildren; two great-great grandchildren; and a sister, Gladys Pauline Tech of Litchfield.
In addition to her husband, Mrs. Merica was preceded in death by a brother, Leroy Eugene Slagle, and two sisters, Winona Stull and Dolly Slagle.
Funeral services were Tuesday, May 9, at the Homer Chapel of Tidd-Williams Funeral Chapels, Inc., with Mrs. Teresa Bonifield leading the service. Burial was in Westside Cemetery in Colon.
scroll down and you will see
Ashlee Linnabary
Ashlee Linnabary, 4, of Homer, died Monday, May 22, 2000, at home.
Survivors include her mother, Jessica Moyer; her father, William Linnabary; a sister, Abagail; a brother, William; grandparents, Dale and Becky Andrews, Doug Moyer and Vernon and Carol Linnabary; and great-grandparents, James and Edith Dun, Andy Andrews and Margaret Linnabary.
Funeral services were held Friday, May 26, at the Charles J. Burden & Sons Funeral Home in Jackson. Burial was in Hillcrest Memorial Park in Jackson.
Memorials are suggested to the Council for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
http://www.homerindex.com/obituary_archives.sml?send_year=2000
You can read more about her and her tragic story as well as many other stories of lost angels by clicking this sentence.
so, if to want to erase a baby’s name from history you probably have a good reason…. right? well it just so happens I know who has both motive & power to make such a thing happen… why? The sister of my fiance at the time was then/is now the head of the chamber of commerce a town or two over. I rented the trailer where he was murdered from her. She wanted this little “fiasco” with her brother to disappear…. and I guess she thought it did.
my son’s obituary has been erased from history apparently…. in a town as small as Homer, Michigan… i find it highly suspect. especially when the guy who was acquitted on a technicality in my son’s death has a sister in a nearby town who is the head of a chamber of commerce…. really respectful of them to erase his name from history…
When he went on trial, they spun it like I was a horrible mom who didnt care about my child and faked being sick (two years after wes died, I was placed on SSD/SSI because of my chronic pain, five more years later I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia) ….. they did a good job of smearing me then & i nearly killed myself over the way they blithely lied repeatedly in court and got others to do the same……. in the end, there is nothing I can do…. he cannot be tried twice for the same crime & he was acquitted because the DA made an error.
The near suicide attempts were 10 years ago during the trial. I haven’t been at that point in a long time. Keep in mind my heart/mind were utterly destroyed by that point. I’d been in the mental hospital for 1/2 a year trying to cope with losing my only kid… in court they were attacking vehemently, even using my own writings about my abuse committed on me to make it seem that I was having FANTASIES OF HURTING MY CHILD……. there really isn’t anything to be done but talk about it, get it out of my system, then let it be…. statuate of limitations for a civil suit expired long ago. I didn’t have the bank or a lawyer willing to take the case at the time.
who really cares that wes is gone? you who made sure his name disappeared? or me who went looking for it 11 years later to be sure it was still there…. all the news reports of the trial seem to have been “sanitized” as well. I dug a bit further and found out that he is working for his sister at the chamber of commerce.
How the does a child murderer guilty as sin but acquitted on a technicality get to work for a city chamber of commerce? 2 words Corruption & NEPOTISM. I have further proof of this, but do not want to set into action anything that could get someone physically hurt, so I have left their names off this page. email btokeefer@gmail.com if you would like further information.
I remember you WESTLEY. I wont forget you.
UPDATE, May 11, 2012 a Remembrance by Westley’s pa.
Westley’s father, Jason William Roberts, was kind enough to provide me with these two images. THANK YOU! many of the youngest images of westley have been stolen by my family and are likely in a safe deposit box. I really do appreciate seeing this. I really am not angry at Jason in the least. Things were what they were, and neither of us can change the past… It was a long time ago. We have both paid dearly for whatever we did in the past. I understand that these two images are all that Jason has to view. Therefore, I will do my best to provide him with each and every image of Westley I have that still exists. It’s only right. If i have more than Jason does, and he will share with me, I can share back
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The October 2011 Activism Activities of Breezy Kiefair
THIS BLOG TO REPLACE DELETED http://breezykiefair.wordpress.com/
Breezy deleted her old blog a few months ago. After several requests from friends for a new blog, and lots of activism news, I decided to bow to the request and open a new blog.
SO…. if you had been following http://breezykiefair.wordpress.com/
this: https://breedheenorilleykeefer.wordpress.com/
is your new source for content from the same source.
Below, you will find links to other online content.
Links for breezy’s involvement in the occupation in solidarity with OCCYPY WALL STREET
http://www.meetup.com/occupytogether/Alamosa-CO/
| Time |
Sunday, October 23 · 6:00pm – 9:00pm
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VGail Vonderweidt
San Luis Valley Regional Organizer
Early this past summer I attended a house meeting set up by MoveOn.org where hundreds of other house meetings across the country were gathering people together to develop a plan to fight the growing surge of the Republican and Tea Party to stall any actions of President Obama in restoring the economy. In fact, those groups are determined to destroy our country just to get this President out of office.
From those house meetings, many thousands of solutions were submitted to MoveOn.org who reached out to other peace loving organizations to refine all the submissions. The refinement ultimately resulted in the Contract for the American Dream. The ten solutions rang incredibly true for me. You can read all of these by typing in Google: Contract for the American Dream. And, I urge you to sign the Contract yourself. Over 300,000 Americans have already signed it.
I decided then that leaders were needed to generate interest and action by more and more people because it takes people like us to bring about change in our government. I have sent out a blanket request to the 84 members of our movement asking for someone to offer you a ride to the Sunday meeting.
Thank you for expressing an interest in the Rebuild the American Dream movement.
P R E S S R E L E A S E
at Hospice Del Valle in Alamosa, Main Street, Alamosa
on Sunday, October 23rd, 2011, at 6:00 PM
Support the OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT across the country, MAKE WALL STREET PAY. The San Luis Valley Rebuild the American Dream Alamosa Council is holding a potluck EVENT PLANNING MEETING for an upcoming rally scheduled for November 5th, 2011. The NATIONAL ‘Rebuild the American Dream’ movement is working toward something bigger than last Friday’s JOBS NOT CUTS RALLY on Route 160!
San Luis Valley Regional Organizer
Rebuild the American Dream Movement
MoveOn.org
gforcevsa@yahoo.com
719-227-9899
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE54993C30203A992
Occupy Alamosa Video content from youtube at above link^^^^^^^^
Sample video from playlist:
******Note on the video playlists, I will update them as necessary to include new content. please email any links I missed to btokeefer@gmail.com or denveroccupied@gmail.com ******
OCCUPY DENVER/DENVER OCCUPIED INFO
Police Brutality Inverview: https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home/10-15-2011-occupy-denver-arrests-the-story-you-probably-werent-told
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9E91E44F59D6806E
Occupy Denver Video content from youtube at above link^^^^^^^^^^^
sample video from playlist
Map to Protest Location in denver
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=208166375239080501990.0004ae1710b88e0ce043d
https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home
https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home/occupy-denver-protest-pics
https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home/occupy-denver-videos
https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home/news-from-occupy-colorado-springs
https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home/contact-us
denver occupied email addy denveroccupied@gmail.com
denver occupied website
https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home
fb page http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002962468730
links about Breezy Kiefair
Parts of old blog preserved here
http://misshightimes.com/users/breezykiefair
Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/Mr8MrsKiefAir?feature=mhsn
playlist of videos created by breezy kiefair:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDDE36959E6DC0055
sample videos from playlist:
~ Do all that you can to cultivate peace within yourself, that it might
shine out from you, and plant the seed of peace in other spirits, for them
to cultivate.~
{Remember… it is when we choose act on the issues that are in front of
our faces, when we choose to get involved instead of looking the other way
as our fellow man struggles, when we choose to take those small simple
little actions, working on righting little wrongs in our everyday lives that
really make change happen, those seemingly small actions are what really
make the world a better place and are a catalyst for greater social change.}
~Both quotes by Breedheen “Bree” O’Rilley Keefer~
I am the 99% they don’t want you to see….
I am the 99% they don’t want you to see….
I am the 99% that they don’t want you to see…
I was born sick. I couldn’t help that. I was allergic even to my mother’s milk. They thought I would die. I didn’t. I have been sick my whole life. When i was younger, I went into periods of “remission” from my fibromyalgia pain but that has not happened in nearly 10 years. The doctors told me not to work at anything physical, i went to school (and into student debt hell) trying to get a degree that would allow me to get a job where it wouldn’t matter so much that i am so sick…. the doctors forbid me to continue after having medical crashes at school repeatedly…..
So i found the wonder treatment of cannabis and it gave me my passion for life back that BIG PHARMA POISON stole from me……. Now I shout about medical and religious use of cannabis and am much happier about who I am. I made a deal to buy land at $2.30 a day. I live off grid. I’m still in pain, I’m still sick… its still tragic, but I’m much happier this way than i was down in the tenements of the city dying the same government sanctioned death I was dying in town…. Its just a lot prettier noble death up here
The only funds i live on are given to me by Social Security Disability and the Food Stamp program. WHEN YOU ADD MY MONTHLY BENEFITS TOGETHER x 12 months, divided by 365 days you get….. $17.42 that is what is supposed to meet every need (food, shelter, clothing, medication, ect ect ect) for 1 person for 1 day…. now think about what these benefits are really designed to do…. to help me?
or to ensure i remain sick, get sicker and end up dead? welcome to my machine…. i been stuck in it since child hood….. don’t believe me? read more here:
the short 4 page version:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/64585079/My-Personal-Christmas-Present-to-the
the more in depth, needs editing, 31 page version to help you understand why i sit at my machine fighting the machine day in and day out.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/64585829/%E2%80%9CA-Long-Strange-Journey-of-1-Cannabis-Patient%E2%80%99s-Colorado-Cannabis-Activsm%E2%80%9D-or-%E2%80%9CAll-About-Breezy-Kiefair%E2%80%9D — with Occupy Denver and Denver Occupied.
Respectfully,
Breedheen O’Rilley Keefer
AKA Breezy Kiefair
AKA Denver Occupied
denver occupied email addy denveroccupied@gmail.com
denver occupied website
https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home
fb page http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002962468730
links about breezy
blog
http://misshightimes.com/users/breezykiefair
on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/user/Mr8MrsKiefAir?feature=mhsn
art “like” page on FB
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Art-of-Breezy-Kiefair/154533251224064
fb profile
http://www.facebook.com/breezy.kiefair
~ Do all that you can to cultivate peace within yourself, that it might
shine out from you, and plant the seed of peace in other spirits, for them
to cultivate.~
{Remember… it is when we choose act on the issues that are in front of
our faces, when we choose to get involved instead of looking the other way
as our fellow man struggles, when we choose to take those small simple
little actions, working on righting little wrongs in our everyday lives that
really make change happen, those seemingly small actions are what really
make the world a better place and are a catalyst for greater social change.}
~Both quotes by Breedheen “Bree” O’Rilley Keefer~
Kiefair.com DIY cannabis and more 