Lynn Powers © 2006 All Rights Reserved
Lynn Powers © 2006 All Rights Reserved
I’m So Beat
my beat out beats your beat
by beat by my beat i mean my cool
outcools your cool my angry young
mannerisms my juvenile alienation outalienates
your standard deviation i’m alienated from the whole
beat nation i’m alienated from the whole beat notion I’m
iconoclastic and bombastic and xenophobic and won’t wear
no black beret i’m beater than beat my beat’s so complete i hate
even myself and sing the beat body decaying smoke whatever’s
burning and never exercise sleep until suppertime sucking
wind and ennui in like grassss, man, i’m the gone daddy’s
daddy-o but nobody’s granddad gone giddily mad gyrating
zenlike indifference to zen and all its enlightened inhibitions
my sitting is prettier than your sitting sister my mindlessness
outempties yours i make the sound of one man drinking
without first thoughts without good or bad thoughts and
i bash basho that bamboo rummy i down more plum
brandy than a blacked out bingeing bukowski wannabe
my big meaty badboy beat stomps your beat with my
big flat feet i hate the upper crust i hate all coppers
and crap on standard syntax and uppercase
punctuation i snap my fingers and the world
disappears i snap the world and i
disappear and that’s how beat
i am or was depending
on when you dug this
DENNIS HELD’s first book of poems, Betting on the Night, was published by Lost Horse Press. He lives in Spokane, Washington.