On the Collapse of American Bohemia: A 21st Century Writer Gets Pissed Off at The Beats.

On the Collapse of American Bohemia: A 21st Century Writer Gets Pissed Off at The Beats.

by james bezerra

Is there an ongoing movement which is social or economic which is currently taking place which has prevented the rise of a new Beat Generation of thinkers?

Or

Was the condensed existence of the Beat Generation an anomaly produced by the rise of post-WWII American-ism? And its institutional need for dissidents who didn’t bother anyone quite too much?

Or

Was the Grunge movement out of Seattle the last - meaning most recent - anti-authoritarian movement? Had Beat literature condensed itself into song lyrics? Should Kurt Cobain be my new William Burroughs? After all, they’re both dead … right?

Or

Do we all exist now in a more populated world where more people have the ability to voice their dissonance from their own particular perspectives? Which maybe means that the Beats were just a bunch of white boys constantly getting kicked out of Columbia University but landing in proximity to a bunch of New York publishing houses?

Or

Is it possible that there was an Indian Jack Kerouac? On his way out of Bombay and I’ve just never heard about him? But his writing was just as jazzy?

Or

Maybe it is possible that there was an Algerian Allen Ginsberg? And my American education and my geo-located Netflix account just refuse to tell me about him?

Or

Is it more likely that the Beats - in all their much-loved, black and white cold-water-flat bullshit - have been absorbed into the consciousness and excreted as literary heroes? Because this country needed some after Mark Twain died poor?

Or

Is it possible that I don’t have any issue with these young white guys hiding out in Paris, hiding out in New York, hiding out across the snowy midwest? And that what I really have an issue with is the sycophantic cult of yes-ing? Which always grows up like quick weeds after they die?

Or

Is it really possible that these four or five guys - who all knew each other - were just the best of the best that my country had to offer in that particular decade? And that their tall shadows are so thick and worthy that they still glower down on us now?

Or

Is it maybe possible that the best writers of any time have had to spend their lives tending fields? Keeping books? Raising children? Is it possible that the best film director in all of history lived in a time before a thing such as film existed?

Or

Is it maybe that I don’t know shit about Alan Ginsberg except that he’s a really good writer and gay and had a beard. And is that the beard I see on every dude in Silverlake? Every pretender? Every poser?

Or

Is it possible that all those Beats - who have since been made into more movies than there were Beats - knew something special? Or is that just what happens when people with ideas meet other people with ideas? And if so, why doesn’t it work that way anymore?

Or

Could it maybe be that those Beats set off a bomb blast? Which maybe still shakes the buildings now? Could it have been about the democratizing of art? Or was it just about a bunch of white boys from Columbia?

Or

Might it be possible that the Beats were just some white guys doing something new and that we lived in a world which could only deal with so much newness? So we reduced all newness to just these few white guys?

Or

Might it be true that what we learned from the Beats is that we should do the best that we can and hope that the world chooses to swallow us up wholly and never ask how or why it’s chosen us?

Or

Is it possible that there’s no way to shrug off their shadows? No way to choose between publishing and being published? Is it possible to keep one’s heart and soul intact when the only way to emulate one’s heros is to live well, die young, and be unavailable for comment after the culture-machine has taken us?  

Or

Is it possible to do none of that? And still do well?

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Poetry of Witness.

Poetry of Witness

by james bezerra

My professor told me

I simply can’t be

a poet of witness

because I happen to be:

American and alive

and white

and male

and middle class

and straight

and therefore have nothing to witness.

And so it goes,

I suppose.

I can’t honestly disagree.

But me, I’m not guilty

of 500 years of racist/patriarchal hegemony.

I’m just trying to to pay my rent.

My Argentinian landlord doesn’t give a shit

about the imperialism of caucasian history.

She just wants her money.

And promptly.

I’ll admit I probably benefit

by being white and fit,

male and straight as an arrow

but I simply fail

to agree that I’ve nothing to witness.

If nothing else there’s my impending poverty

since - either way - I can’t pay my rent with poetry.

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A Modern American Poet Considers a Homeless Man on a Cold Night.

A Modern American Poet Considers a Homeless Man on a Cold Night

by james bezerra

I think it a question worthy:

how many a Jack London story

could have ended quite happily

if they’d first gone to Sports Authority.

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Cheerio.

If you’re new here then you should probably know that I have a pretty liberal definition of “poetry”. My definition can be extended to - you know - words arranged in some sort of order so as to convey meaning. And stuff.

And - you know - I’m not married to the idea that it needs to have order. Or meaning. Or words, really. One time a dude gave me an old Cheerio that he found in his pocket and I was all like, “This is a fucking beautiful poem!”

So with that in mind: LOOK! NEW POEMS!

(Not here, silly. Down there.)

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Skinny Jeans With Holes.

Skinny Jeans With Holes

by james bezerra

Saw a girl the other day

in those tight skinny jeans

tight & skinny as a

single coat of blue paint on skin.

Tight & skinny except

for the ankles

bunched just so,

because she’s shorter than her pants.

And little round holes there

on the back of each ankle bunch.

Odd, I guess.

Strange enough to catch the eye.

But then - I realize -

at home she tugs them down

and walks around her linoleum kitchen

with feet half covered.

Her little pale heels

wearing through the stretch

of the denim

without meaning to.

It feels like too intimate

a thing to know

about a stranger:

what she does alone.

A feeling that’s something

like seeing a woman

driving on a freeway

sucking her thumb.

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Hipsters in Photos.

Hipsters in Photos

by james bezerra

Hipsters who already look

like the yellowed old photos

they’ll show their distant kids.

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Screw in a Lightbulb.

Screw in a Lightbulb

by james bezerra

How many light bulbs

will never be screwed in at all?

Lost. Broken. Deemed inefficient.

Light bulbs, forever

without a punchline.

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A Haiku, The Title of Which is: Can Be.

A Haiku, The Title of Which is: Can Be

by james bezerra

I do so enjoy

the freedom of poetry

and how short it … is.

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In the Park.

In the Park

by james bezerra

A blind astronomer

shares a park bench

with a meditating monk.

Neither is aware of the other.

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Cats Don’t Care What Helicopters Are.

Cats Don’t Care What Helicopters Are

by james bezerra

Sometimes I feel bad for the cat

because life is hard enough when you know

that noise is a helicopter, a siren, a gunshot

or that it’s only my foot

moving under the blanket.

Life is hard enough

even when you know all that,

but for her it’s just a

massive loud thwumping overhead,

a shrieking wail,

a thunderous sudden popping,

or a nefarious creature

lurking below the blanket.

Sometimes though,

maybe she feels bad for me and

how worried I get about things which aren’t

food, sleep or food or sleep.

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French New Wave Think Piece.

Everyone I know has divided up into two camps in the last week: people telling me to go see the movie Gravity or people telling me to go see the movie Prisoners. Which begs the question, why has no one yet made a movie about how we are all prisoners OF gravity? It would be some sort of French New Wave think piece where everyone sits around on the beach in black and white watching the waves roll back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and just thinking - really thinking, you know? -  about how imprisoned we all are by gravity. And then a little girl rides past on a bicycle and her little bell dings twice.

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An Orphan Thought.

I haven’t yet imagined the story in which this letter (or probably postcard) is going to exist, but sometimes these fragments just fall out of one’s brain. I’m careful to write them down.

So imagine some bearded, loving but much put-upon father receiving a postcard in his mailbox. Maybe he is in his office, but most likely he has just gotten home and he is standing in the lobby, checking his mail before climbing the stairs. He may be getting this postcard in the past. I like to think 1948, but I have no reason yet why to think that. He is wearing round eyeglasses. It is possible this is taking place in New York. Or maybe Vienna. He studies the picture of the postcard. It is probably an idyllic photo of a beach, but also kind of tacky, like a picture of a Florida beach in the 1970s. He studies the picture. His eyes are confused because he is too tired to be curious. The glasses make his eyes look very large. Imagine that he flips the postcard over and reads the note:

Dearest Father,

Sadly I will not be joining you in the cheese business.

Despondent but certain,

your loving son

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