THE BEAT POETS BEAT

THE BEAT POETS BEAT In the heart of San Francisco, Beat poet and publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights bookstore shines bright, where words dance like shadows and the Beat poets ignite the night/ October 7, 1955 history takes a breath and five souls step onto the stage at Gallery Six, defying convention, flirting with death/ Allen Ginsberg, with fire in his eyes, unleashes “Howl” with a thunderous cry, a manifesto of madness and a rebellion against the lie/ Philip LaMantia, haunted, reads to his dead friend, his poetry, weeping, echoing a voice that refuses to bend/ Michael McClure paints images, Gary Snyder sings with the trees and Philip Whalen whispers wisdom, each line a gust of the breeze/ Jack Kerouac, a slick cat, the pulse on the side, cheering from the sidelines at the Six, his heart a drum, a ride, his “Beatitude” was full of pride/ Man, he was having a poet’s blast and wrote about that first gig of Beat poets at Gallery Six in The Dharma Bums/ Dig it people, Kerouac was a hipster and juicehead all rolled into one, his words will last into the beat of a new jazz thing/ The rhythm of jazz where poetry flows and grows, drunk poetry fans are lost in the haze, sipping inspiration, caught in the craze/ So, dig the jazz of Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker, Miles, Diz, and Monk where each note is a heartbeat, each beat a junkie’s funk/ Bebop intertwines a new vision in the structure of their poet dreams, crazed improvisational jazz solos are a tapestry of spoken word screams/ So let us raise a glass to words unchained, to the Beat Generation, where poetry reigned/ The echoes of City Lights, let their legacy shine bright, for in the lines of their verses we find our voice, our fight/