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Howl

A 21st Century Response to Allen Ginsberg's 1956 Poem, 'Howl', Reflecting on the Trappings of Popular Culture and Technology

By Keenia Dyer-WilliamsPublished 6 years ago 1 min read
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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Instagram, Facebook, all social media and internet and TV, insecurities, seeing competition,

when dragging their thumbs up flat, electric screens just looking for reasons as to why they think they're not good enough,

lost humans searching for self-love everywhere else but in the vast black hollows of themselves,

who don't want to fill those holes with what it means to be them but what it means to paint over their pouts like Kylie Jenner,

who would prefer to bare their bodies in distorted fun-house mirrors and see reflected an Iggy, or Nicki, or Chyna,

who feel like they aren't man enough until it's gym and protein shakes and constant sex and slut shaming,

who tell themselves they think they like blue over pink and one genital type over another and natural over makeup and plastic surgery until taught to laugh at uncontoured noses on naked faces or tiger stripes over raw skin,

who think real love is synonymous with rosy rom-com cheese or accepting abuse from the Christian Greys society has birthed,

who eat Jeremy Kyle up like fodder to pigs, thriving on schadenfreude as if it were nutrients in their acidic soil of loneliness and debt and declining relationships,

who would rather poverty in the latest Yeezys or Giuseppes because two hundred and twenty-seven virtual likes from strangers in 17 minutes means more than the month's rent,

who hollow-eye and high wish love drugs and coke and ketamine would let their bodies run out of reality with their minds to the place where existing is easier than escape,

who slaves to the magazine pages follow headlines like a bible, waists enchained by training corsets and hearts weighed down by manmade ideologies,

who howl incessantly in pain for security, and out of pain tear apart their flesh and allow the world a million bites, leaving just enough for corporate vultures to pick at what's left of a foundation,

with so little questioning, only the ache of a heart and churn of a gut under selfie smiles.

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About the Creator

Keenia Dyer-Williams

A full-time aesthete and overthinker based in Birmingham, UK, with a penchant for all types of writing. From art criticism, fashion posts, poetry, novels, and even those really elaborate Booking.com reviews.

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