Scowl

A poem by a gay Jew about generational disaffection

I tried so hard to get AI to turn me into Allen Ginsberg, but the best it could do after several edits was “French post-structuralist Santa Claus.” C’est la North Pole, I suppose.

Why hello, reader! It’s Raf, your millennial Beat-seraph, here to tell you some good news (if you like poetry): just below is a video of me doing my best young Ginsberg impersonation, wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt while reading a poem I recently wrote titled — you guessed it — “Scowl.”

Inspired by the Gayest Beat’s trippy verse, I’ve always wanted to sound my barbaric yawp about the weird brutalities of my coming-of-age, the broad-spectrum hypocrisy my generation was expected to chew, swallow and regurgitate for subsequent generations.¹ And regurgitate it we did, some of us becoming practical applications of the well-known-but-not-well-liked horseshoe theory. Sorry Gens Z and Alpha: we showed up for the collectivism and human rights activism but ended up staying for the failure economy. We shouldn’t have fallen for the lie that one can fail in who and how one is — failures that are supposedly “fixed” via three easy retweets from the right account, three hostile cancellations of problematic old faves, or three hassle-free payments of $1,499.99 to a bona fide purveyor of authentic selfhood — but after the 2008 economic crash...and the overwhelming influence of social media...and, you know, the giant grift-composed-of-a million-smaller-grifts that is our unique time and place...can you really blame us?

Of course you can! And I get it, which is why I’ve written this poem by way of apology. I hope you enjoy it! And who knows? Maybe there’ll even be a Part II someday.

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