Beats Surrender

I’m having second third fourth thoughts about The Beats

Daddy

O.

See: Kerouac. Well. I read him dry when I was 16. 17. 18.

and

thought

He and his crew were cool. They were not. They are

try

hards.

Burroughs? Murdering junkie dickhead rich kid idolised then

and

now;

Think they all went to see him. Cobain recorded with him

didn’t

he?

But it was all on paper, see. When it really, and it did, come down

to

it

They looked after number one first. Left trails of wives

and

kids -

Their own or others' - from coast to coast and wherever else

they

fled.

I suppose Howl is good and On the Road captures something of

their

essence,

And that they kinda smashed thru the 1950s to enable the 1960s,

but

then

The 1960s and their psychedelia inevitably dribbled into the 1970s

heroin/

coke;

One drug makes you a boring weasel and the other so full of shit that you won’t

shut

up.

Well, I suppose it depends on how closely, or how wide you decide to focus

your

lens,

And I suppose therefore and thus the fact we know to focus

our

lenses

Is a kind of testament to how the Beats did have an impact, even if

it’s

irritating,

And even if their morals and ethics and pseudo-Buddhist proclamations

are

moronic.