The Tuesday Platform: Understand that this is a dream (Poems in April ~ Day 9)

Understand That This Is A Dream 
 by Allen Ginsberg

Real as a dream
What shall I do with this great opportunity to fly?
What is the interpretation of this planet, this moon?
If I can dream that I dream / and dream anything dreamable / can I dream
I am awake / and why do that?
When I dream in a dream that I wake / up what
happens when I try to move?
I dream that I move
and the effort moves and moves
till I move / and my arm hurts
Then I wake up / dismayed / I was dreaming / I was waking
when I was dream still / just now.
and try to remember next time in dreams
that I am in dreaming.
And dream anything I want when I’m awaken.
When I’m in awakeness what do I desire?
I desire to fulfill my emotional belly.
My whole body my heart in my fingertips thrill with some old fulfillments.
Arcane parchments my own and the universe the answer.
Belly to Belly and knee to knee.
The hot spurt of my body to three to thee
old boy / dreamy Earl / you Prince of Paterson / now king of me / lost Haledon
first dream that made me take down my pants
urgently to show the cars / auto trucks / rolling down avenue hill.
That far back what do I remember / but the face of the leader of the gang was blond /
that loved me / one day on the steps of his house blocks away  (Read full poem here)

Greetings poets, wayfarers and friends. Welcome to the Tuesday Platform, the weekly open stage for sharing poems in the Imaginary Garden.  Please link up a poem, old or new, and spend some time this week visiting the offerings of our fellow writers.

If you are participating in the poem-a-day challenge and looking for inspiration then here is an optional prompt for you. Write a poem using the title of Ginsberg's poem as a point of reference.   

Choose your own form or write in free verse, if preferred. I look forward to reading what you guys come up with on Day 9 of the month-long adventure. Happy Poeming!🍄

 

SHARE * READ * COMMENT * ENJOY

A Birthday in June ~ Get Ready to Howl!

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.” 
― Allen Ginsberg

Source

Allen Ginsberg was born on 3 June 1926. He was admitted to Columbia University, and as a student there in the 1940s, he began close friendships with William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, all of whom later became leading figures of the Beat movement. As an icon of the Beats, Ginsberg was involved in countless political activities, including protests against the Vietnam War, and he spoke openly about issues that concerned him, such as free speech and gay rights agendas. Read more on Poets.org.

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“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...”

Opening lines of Howl, by Allen Ginsberg

To listen to an audio reading, click HERE.

"This is perhaps the most famous line in all of Ginsberg's poetry. From his poem "Howl," it first describes the subject of the poem - the 'best minds' - figures who have been rejected by society for their unwillingness to conform to its institutions and ideals." Read more HERE. Ginsberg was concerned with the state of creative thinking in the 50s - how it was bound by conformity and laws preventing freedom of expression, if the ideas being expressed were deemed inappropriate. Howl itself was considered obscene and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who published it under City Lights Press, was arrested and brought to trial in 1957.

However, times have changed. Here we are in the second decade of the Twenty First Century, and I'm wondering if we have anything to howl about... If you do have a rant, then let us hear it. The form is prose-poetry or free verse, inspired by that of Ginsberg and in honour of his innovation and enormous contribution to the poetic movement of the 20th Century.