About the Poem
This was my first attempt at writing a poem in the "Beat" style. It actually turned out to be a little harder than I thought, because all of the "Beat" Generation poets had their own unique style. So, I guess this could be called my own personal "Beat" style. There are probably some words I created on my own, but only because they fit what I was trying to say, and they are pretty self-explanatory definition-wise.
About the poem itself, it is essentially a narrative about a person searching for that one place in his life where he feels he fits in. To get there, he has to travel through his own personal hells, and many times it seems that he's lost sight of his goals.
Immortal Rhythm |
| by Ryan Williams |
| Here I stand, searching for that little cafe down Beat Street, where the atmosphere doesn't reek of the rotten eggs that have ruled our lives for too long. The sound won't die, but it never grows any louder, like the memories of an age-old dream on the verge of oblivion. I walk the sidewalks, staring numbly into the neon gates of hell where Beelzebub wait with his contracts and loan sharks, giving away instant cash in exchange for nothing major - Nothing but your soul. This disillusionment permeates my world, and drowns out the way to the temple of soul that I seek as my haven; but the sound is still there, and the Beat never dies. Here I watch, searching for that little cafe down Beat Street, and listen as our small marble spirals away from its orbit, forever stuck between day and night. No one hears the screams of the kamikaze banshees as they fly themselves into the last refuges of a world that kept itself alive without needing to fear the barbers who would shave away its goatee, its life. Puritanical, Satanical, all the same, all working its black magic on the music. The day it died, no one really sang, but ran as its undead counterpart reared its deviled head. Screaming black words only its minions heard, sang, chanted. But the sound is still there; the Beat never dies. Hear I listen, still searching for that little cafe down Beat Street, dodging away from the monsters that legends never speak of. A dictator, or just a dick, denying one last alcoholic pleasure to an audience tired of sun, flowers, and blue skies, laughs at the meager attempts of his pawns to resist. Only sacrifices in a game, no more, maybe less. Can't go back, always forward, straight into the steel jaws of one more damn Bond villain. And two weeks of cold, away from the fire, that'll dull the senses, or are they already dull? Protest? Ha - a sacrifice and nothing more is said. But there is another path. Is there? Or is there? The sound is still there, the Beat never dies. There I stood, watching and listening, and searching for that little cafe down Beat Street. And now the sounds grow louder, the red blood returns to the fingers, the toes, the ideas. Smoke, from a snake, a snake of leaves, that speaks to me, and tells the story, the fairytale, the truth. The sky isn't blue, the grass isn't green, and those long gone inspirations, enemies? - that long ago pierced the soap bubble we all lived in, they knew, know, will know. The door is opened to the faint tapping of the instruments of our soul, spirit, body. And here, in this little cafe down Beat Street, I am done searching because the sound is always here, and the Beat will never die. |
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