I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness (23rd Feb 2008)

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 machin- 
              ery of night, 
       who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat 
              up smoking in the supernatural darkness of 
              cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities 
              contemplating jazz, 
       who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and 
              saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene- 
              ment roofs illuminated, 
       who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes 
              hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy 
              among the scholars of war, 
       who were expelled from the academies for crazy & 
              publishing obscene odes on the windows of the 
              skull............
                                                            (Allen Ginsberg)

He knew what was going on.

The best minds of generations are always destroyed by madness of sorts.
I guess it's a price to pay for being too innovative...
No one will accepts their work until about 50 years after their death,
when they've finally caught up with them.
Just look at most artists and poets (such as Blake)!

Read the rest of the poem here:
http://members.tripod.com/~Sprayberry/poems/howl.txt

It's bloody brilliant :)