Howl lyrics

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection

to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking

in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating

across the tops of cities contemplating jazz

They who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square

They who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke

on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of

Third Avenue iron dreams and stumbled to unemployment offices

They who crashed through their minds in jail with the charm of reality in

their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz

Rocking and rolling in the

midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life

a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon

Ah, Carl, while you are not safe, I am not safe, and now you're

really in the total animal soup of time -

Visions! Omens! Hallucinations! Miracles and Ecstasies, gone down the American river!

Mad generation, mad generation, down on the rocks of Time!

Holy the groaning saxophone ! Holy the bop apocalypse ! Holy the jazzbands marijuana, hipsters, peace and junk and drums!

Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers. Holy the mysterious

rivers of tears under the streets!

Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the

soul!

Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the

soul!