"This is nothing but a beat generation." - Jack Kerouac
Before he found his beat,
(long before Coppola bought
"on the road" for millions,)
Kerouac called his generation
a 'found generation' :
mistaking his own compassion and inspiration
for the realities of the time
He didn't realize
we were yet to come,
after the U.S.S.R., McCarthy,
glam-rock, Bob Dylan,
disco, (id, ego) and air-raid drills
We are advanced, barbaric
artistic and unstoppable
mellow as doves
indestructible as cockroaches;
"Nirvana" was our great depression
our great war between Tupac and Biggie
We are terribly over-educated
and by world standards: rich,
and we're mainly free of the imperialistic obsessions:
swallowed in the thrills of internationalism,
free-thought free-enterprise
confidence and modernity
But, at heart, I'm still a dharma bum
poor and free
still beat
