"this War was never political at all"

[vze422fs at verizon.net]

on 2/27/03 10:16 AM, Sean Lawler at seanlawler at rcn.com wrote:

> Re: "this War was never political at all"
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: vze422fs at verizon.net
> To: JBFRAME at aol.com ; pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 12:11 AM
> Subject: Re: "this War was never political at all"
> 
> 
> on 2/27/03 7:58 PM, JBFRAME at aol.com at JBFRAME at aol.com wrote:
> 
> 
> In a message dated 02/27/2003 8:50:28 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> pynchonoid at yahoo.com writes:
> 
> 
> 
> ...a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by
> something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying,
> 'Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of
> Nation] is at stake," but meaning, most likely, dawn
> is nearly here, I need my night's blood, my funding,
> funding, ahh more, more. . . .
> 
> 
> 
> Reminds me... 
> 
> Moloch 
> What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their
> brains and imagination?
> Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children
> screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the
> parks! 
> Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch!
> Moloch the heavy judger of men!
> Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse
> and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast
> stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
> Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!
> Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo!
> Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
> Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand
> in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and
> croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
> Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity
> and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is
> a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!
> Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Moloch!
> Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
> Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without
> a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I
> abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!
> Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries!
> blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses!
> granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
> They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios,
> tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
> Visions! Omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American
> river! 
> Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive
> bullshit! 
> Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood!
> Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years' animal creams and suicides! Minds! New
> loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!
> Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy
> yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
> carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!
> 
> 1956 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I saw the best minds of my generation walking the negro streets at dawn,
> Angel-headed hipsters searching for an angry fix,
> Naked, hysterical, starving.
> 
> Thanks, man.
> 
> Sometimes we need to be reminded.
> 
> Peace,
> Joe
> 
> 
> Whoops...
> 
> "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..."
> 
Thanks. I didn't have a copy of Howl next to me at the time. I just
remembered the gist off the top of my head. It's a great American poem.

Thanks to everybody who has seen fit to invoke it at this time. I'll go dig
up a copy tomorrow to reread it. As I said, sometimes we need to be
reminded.

There is a distinctly American train of thought that runs from Jefferson
through people like Ginsberg straight through to us. We must not lose that.

Peace
Joe