Friday, September 04, 2009

Another Example of How the Alteration of a Single Word Can Produce an Entirely Different Poem


I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
Nintendo, 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 machin-
ery of night...

-- Apologies to Alan Ginsburg

And this doesn't even get to the line
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
where it really gets good.

(This sort of game can be endlessly multiplied, of course. My wife, for example, suggested that a better version would be created by swapping in "iPhone" instead of "Nintendo".)

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