Joan, Bob, and Ginsberg
If you had known Joan and Bob
you would have said they were such crazies –
her hauntingly beautiful voice
his wildly cataclysmic fantasies of words
floating o’er rows of dancing girls
though often devoid of coherence
high on the euphoria of their drunken age
and there, in these frenzies of stupor and pain and trance
Ginsberg read his poems
of protest
and the madness of his times
who knew we would walk again
after these many years
into the same turmoils
but where are the voices of protest
as strong as
Ginsberg’s
as poetic
the seventies weren’t that long ago folks
if you find the grand Inquisitor
relevant still
I may have written a few poems
here and there
but it doesn’t matter much
for these are different times, though the agonies remain
we like memes
and cat videos and take selfies
find our gullible nirvanas in seeking nods
and discuss our lives in YouTube comments
and though I like Joan and Bob
I would much rather sit and read
Ginsberg’s poems
of madness
and protest
but that’s beside the fact
that the times have changed
though the agonies remain
Anant has been writing poetry since his late twenties. He attempts to explore the intricacies of the human mind and the cultural milieus that it breathes in through a conversational style of poetry. His poems seem to emanate from an urgent and pressing need to ‘word’ the abstract. He occasionally tends to omit punctuation from his poems, in part to preserve the urgency and flow of words. He blogs frequently at www.newagepoems.blogspot.com and publishes his poems on social media apps such as Facebook and Instagram. Anant lives with his wife and son in Herndon, Virginia, and can be reached at anantdhavale@gmail.com.
Image by Rowland Scherman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons