January 18th

Write anything. Prose, poetry, doesn't matter. The only qualification is that it somehow references, mocks, copies, or parodies the first line of Allen Ginsberg's famous "Howl", which reads:

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

Famous examples of this:
"I saw the best meals of my generation / destroyed by the madness of my brother. / My soul carved in slices / by spikey-haired demons." -The Simpsons.

"I saw the worst bands of my generation applied by magic marker to dry wall". - They Might Be Giants.

I got this story idea after watching that Twilight Zone episode about the world heating up and wondering just what would happen if the world cooled off. After finishing it, I was dissatisfied with it because it reminded me a little too much of Stephen King's Nightsurf. I added the requisite lines for the thread theme at the end after thinking it would make a better concluding paragraph than the one I had before.

----

They sat on the checkout counter of a liquor store drinking booze and warm beer. All of them were well under the old drinking age, but fine and fit young folks; they’d entered the city under a makeshift hole in the fence – codenamed “the asshole” amongst the youth to generate such intelligent quips as “hey, Chip, you want to crawl into the asshole tonight?” - and found this rotgut liquor store completely untouched two miles up the main road.

Carla was a fine blonde piece of ass who usually ganged up with those dipshit Mexicans, but today she’d elected to take off with the gringos to venture into the asshole and see the city in all of its darkened, abandoned glory. Sure, her Mexican boyfriend and their roaming gang of drunken lunatics had all the guns, but she felt safer with what her grandmother used to call “her own kind.” Maybe it was that old tribalism setting in since all the bad shit wiped out order and rule and Martin Luther King, Jr., but she was pretty sure it was the pale, blue-eyed Pete, who sat calmly under an unruly mop of brown hair and chugging Jack straight from the bottle.

“Goddam tequila,” said Chuck, a thin work who was already balding at 20. He eyed the bottle in Carla’s soft, nail-bitten hands as one would a smashed cucaracha, “even when we can convince you to get away from the enemy you’re still slamming their favorite baby formula. You’re breaking my heart.”

“There’s a traitor in our mist!” emoted Chip, a dull piece of shit who couldn’t even remember the shitpot state he lived in before the survivors clogged Canada like a swollen artery a year ago. “Nonetheless,” he said, standing tall on the counter like an orator preparing to campaign for Lincoln, “we must all do a bottoms-up to our fallen brotheren, so take your moonshine and drink up!”

“To our fallen white brothers and sisters!” seven children cheered. Only Carla remained silent – and also Pete, who continued to stare distantly out the window and deeply into the inky canopy of the charred night sky.

One of the crew, an old army brat called Rodge, informed Chip that he needed a drink; Chip snagged a shotglass from the display by his feet, poured a dab of his drinking water in it, and then dumped four OxyContins they’d obtained from the CVS down the road inside of it. The football-shaped pills serenaded quietly in the small glass.

“To us!” they cried when Chip was ready, and Carla knew that “us” didn’t mean the good ol’ boys sitting here; “us” meant the White race, that magnificent gathering of Homo Sapiens Sapiens who were running the show before but who had been taken abruptly off the air as of late. Gulps of alcohol filled the room; the clatter of pills against Chip’s teeth put an odd sort of punctuation to this little toast.

Talking began shortly after, mostly punctuated by a Chip who was hyped on what he called the “percs” of being the leader. Chip was dumb as a socket wrench but charismatic, no doubt about it, and many of the kids listened to him in the same way many of their parents listened to Brother White. He began to ramble on and on about the “Spic threat”; since the black folk folded into infighting a month ago it seemed like a reasonable discussion, but Carla knew it was aimed right at her. She bit back bitter tears as the rant continued, but dared not run out into the abandoned metropolis alone. The others stared at Chip and nodded drunkenly, as if these particular revelations weren’t orated by Brother White at all during the last few church services.

“ … trying to jump the fence even before those years that the world started warming up round the Equator. Equator runs right through Mexico City, you know, and that’s why they started killing our patrol officers and how they took over Austin and transformed Texas into the Nuevo Republico of Mexico or some taco shit like that. They was too dumb to move north like the real Texans and they fried where they stood, goddamn greasers … “

“I can see stars,” Pete said, speaking for the first time since they arrived. All eyes darted to him like pins on a magnet. Pete considered the sky with a slightly cocked head. “I think I can see the North Star out there, through the dust.”

Chip, suddenly facing an entire audience thieved, looked at the source and spat, “the only stars the scientists say you be seein for the next ten years is the ones made by my fist to yer Jew-lovin face.” Chip followed this with a forced, loud laugh, rotating his head noticeably until everyone else was looking at him again and pretending to laugh right along.

In the middle of the recapture of Fort Ignorance, Pete stood up, a zombie transfixed by the flesh of an unseen sight out of the E-Z-Go window. He left his tequila on the floor and drifted out side silently, unnoticeably. Carla took the opportunity to follow, carrying the 1800 bottle under her arm like a football.

“G’bye Mr. Jew Lover and Mrs. Spic Lover!” Chuck said through a mouth filled with a melted glob of Skittles. “Hope yer assfuckin’ ends with a wandering nigger shooting both of yer in the head!”

Chip, realizing in his dim mind that he had lost two of his crew but that he needed to assert himself to the fools that remained, began screaming after Chuck stopped. “Don’t expect us to come after ya. We’ll tell your mamas Mexicans shot ya ‘n you’ll be martyrs to our cause. You fucking Jewi … “ The painfully slow closing of the E-Z-Go door brought a merciful end to Chip’s rant.

Carla thought of stupid things, like telling Pete her name or asking him what he planned to do and if he wanted to move back to Canada and if he wanted to settle down and fuck and have kids with a Nebraskan girl, but he relieved her of that duty by immediately grabbing her hand and wrapping it tightly in his, as if he was about to help her over a dangerous precipice.

“I know a place,” he began as Carla fought desperately against the ecstasy shooting through her body like a bullet so she could listen, “it’s a pool not three blocks from here. It’s chlorinated and re-done. I think …” He paused here, seeming to search out words that hadn’t seen much use in the Camp.” I think the African-Americans redid it. I’ve swam in it ever since we set things up outside of St. Paul.”

He pulled Carla along, her feet following automatically, her head buzzing and wondering if this is what summer love felt like, summer love that hit in Minnesota during the dead of February but with an eighty degree evening that kissed you like a Midwestern June, and yes, she thought she could see a small twinkle up north, yes, it was a dull wink shining through millions of cubic feet of cocaine-chopped dust and greenhouse gas like the faintest possible light in a world that had known only darkness, yes, and she knew they would swim through the night and make love and watch the sun send scattered rays across negro streets at dawn.

"land of the blind #2"

in fear
i see my generation
crawl through streets of madness
dragging hysterical minds
destroyed by angry times
let them fix themselves
i’m starving for the best
looking at the naked dawn

I saw the last bus leaving
and having run to the station
looked at the time table
to find an empty space
where times and places
should have been.
I bought some tea
and, thinking of nothing much,
drank it instinctively
not to say verily
but to fend off
that old ennui.

through my migrane eyes,
i saw the
best minds
of my mind
destroyed by
madness and self-deprecation.

i saw myself,
starving for
acceptance and approval,
instead,
finding only
guilt and anger.

i saw myself
dragging my
disease-ridden self
through the milky corners
of my mind.

i was looking for truth;
i found nothingness.