Saturday, July 26, 2008

Moloch in the Ghetto


Moloch was a blood-thirsty Semitic deity known for demanding sacrifices of the human flesh. Allen Ginsberg was the reigning poet king of the beatnik era, with a passion for words and men!
What's the link between the two?

I wouldn't know, but ask Eldridge Cleaver:
The rebellion of the white youth in the epoch of worldwide revolution, against the oppressive injustice of their fathers, apparently took four discernible stages.
The first steps were heralded, by the irrevocable war-cry, of an oft-times tunic clad jew, followed by his assiduous pilgrims, "who were too lazy to take baths and too stingy to buy a haircut". This ravenous modern-day deity was raising his howl, a scathing, outraged denunciation of the system - demanding the first-born child of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and all the way down the lineages of these "great" slave-owners.

Cleaver, then quotes Kerouac... the lilac evening when Moriarty, a disillusioned white man, wishes he were a Denver Mexican or a soulful young negro with a husky voice.

This was just the first stage though. Moloch's revolution was content to passively withdraw into reclusive communal living, rejecting the economy of oppression. "In their cool beat pads, smoking pot and listening to jazz in a perpetual orgy of esoteric bliss, there were others, less crushed by the system, who recognized the need for positive action."

"Moloch would gladly have legalized the use of euphoric drugs and marijuana, passed out free jazz albums and sleeping bags, to all those willing to sign affidavits promising to remain 'beat'."
Hah... and yes that is where the deity of poetry ended and non-violent sit ins started.

1 comment:

Belmondo Cafe said...

"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"
I have this committed to memory! I demand more air time!