No Fugs Today

Billmon linked to Ginsberg’s Howl on Friday, so I’m sitting here while it prints out. I saw the bearded obscene Jewish saint on the Dylan documentary on PBS not long ago and remembered the times I’d heard him read in person — twice in fact, once with Peter Orlovsky accompanying on the harmonium — and then there was the glorious chant before the Pentagon, “Out, demons, out!” enshrined forever on an ancient scratchy record by the Fugs.

Ginsberg, Fugs, and finger chimes, holy Mother of God. There’s no surer sign of how far down we’ve sunk than that there are no Fugs today. Where is 2005’s “Kill for Peace”? (Damn, it’s getting cold in here.) The Secret Service picks up high school kids with naughty T-shirts now as teachers stand with lowered eyes, and they’d arrest the poet master just for drawing breath.

On Wednesday I was at Brodsky Bookshop looking through a paperback of hippie life in Huerfano County in southern CO back in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Remember “zomes”? That’s where they built them. The cover showed a pretty lady hiding her nakedness behind a bundle of harvested marijuana plants. I kept on turning pages, and suddenly I was looking at Orlovsky’s hairy privates, swinging in the breeze from a muscled body sweating in the sun. There were mountains in the background, and he was digging in the compost pile, a wicked grin across his face. Who knew that he was ever here, where I’ve come rolling to a temporary stop?

At least I didn’t grow up in a box, or stay there. What about you, chilluns? What’s your generation got to sing about in heaven, buying that first condo?!? Get a move on now, it’s later than you think.