Howl

Song Howl
Artist Bob Dylan
Artist Allen Ginsberg
Album Bob Dylan's Greenwich Village: Sounds from the Scene in 1961

Lyrics

[00:07.92] I saw the best minds
[00:09.05] Of my generation destroyed by madness
[00:14.38] Starving hysterical naked
[00:19.52] Dragging themselves
[00:20.56] Through the negro streets
[00:21.84] At dawn looking for an angry fix
[00:25.93] Angelheaded hipsters burning
[00:28.88] For the ancient heavenly connection
[00:31.17] To the starry dynamo in the machinery of night
[00:36.27] Who poverty and tatters and hollow eyed
[00:38.91] And high sat up smoking in the supernatural
[00:42.45] Darkness of cold water flats floating
[00:44.88] Across the tops of cities contemplating jazz
[00:50.45] Who bared their brains to Heaven
[00:52.29] Under the El and saw Mohammedan angels
[00:55.25] Staggering on tenement roofs illuminated
[00:59.74] Who passed through universities
[01:01.36] With radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas
[01:06.16] And Blake light tragedy among
[01:08.73] The scholars of money and war
[01:13.42] Who were expelled from the academies for crazy
[01:17.19] Publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull
[01:23.56] Who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear
[01:27.11] Burning their money in wastebaskets
[01:29.19] And listening to the Terror through the wall
[01:32.88] Who got busted in their pubic beards returning
[01:35.86] Through Laredo with a belt
[01:37.32] Of marijuana for New York
[01:40.73] Who ate fire in paint hotels or drank
[01:44.21] Turpentine in Paradise Alley death
[01:47.77] Or purgatoried their torsos night after night
[01:51.90] With dreams with drugs
[01:53.56] With waking nightmares
[01:55.24] Alcohol and cock and endless balls
[01:59.01] Incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud
[02:02.32] And lightning in the mind leaping towards
[02:05.43] Poles of Canada Paterson
[02:08.09] Illuminating all the motionless world
[02:10.53] Of Time between
[02:13.04] Peyote solidities of halls
[02:15.72] Backyard green tree cemetery dawns
[02:18.95] Wine drunkenness over the rooftops rooftops
[02:23.19] Storefront boroughs of teahead joyride
[02:26.19] Neon blinking traffic light
[02:28.98] Sun and moon and tree vibrations
[02:31.08] In the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn
[02:34.02] Ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind
[02:40.48] Who chained themselves to subways
[02:42.57] For the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx
[02:45.84] On benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children
[02:49.44] Brought them down shuddering mouth wracked
[02:52.16] And battered bleak of brain all drained
[02:54.45] Of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo
[02:59.43] Who sank all night in submarine light
[03:01.69] Of Bickford's floated out and sat through
[03:05.08] The stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's
[03:09.15] Listening to the crack of doom
[03:11.06] On the hydrogen jukebox
[03:14.23] Who talked continuously seventy hours
[03:16.93] From park to pad to bar to Bellevue
[03:19.63] To museum to the Brooklyn Bridge
[03:21.99] A lost batallion of platonic
[03:24.24] Conversationalists jumping
[03:26.76] Down the stoops off fire escapes
[03:29.61] Off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon
[03:34.45] Yacketayakking screaming vomiting
[03:37.56] Whispering facts and memories and anecdotes
[03:40.58] And eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals
[03:43.38] And jails and wars
[03:46.07] Whose intellects disgorged in total recall
[03:49.64] For seven days and nights with brilliant eyes
[03:52.74] Meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement
[03:56.94] Who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey
[04:00.12] Leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards
[04:03.02] Of Atlantic City Hall
[04:05.75] Suffering Eastern sweats
[04:07.55] And Tangerian bone grindings
[04:10.07] And migraines of China under
[04:12.25] Junk withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room
[04:16.57] Who wandered around and around
[04:18.12] At midnight in the railway yard
[04:20.13] Wondering where to go
[04:21.93] And went leaving no broken hearts
[04:25.17] Who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars
[04:28.75] Racketing through snow toward lonesome
[04:31.03] Farms in grandfather night