The Beat

“There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock. In the ‘50s if you were male you could rebel, but if you were female your families had you locked up.” Gregory Corso

Them boys don’t know from beat-

I been beat up, beat down, beat in, and beat out

most all my life

Them boys don’t wanna love no woman;

they wanna make love to their mirrors

to themselves

They love each other;

woman gets fucked

Wanna hear some howlin’?

Listen to my late stage back alley abortion

Groove 
to some volts of electricity jammed through my brain

Hear my fists beating 

against the locked doors of mental hospitals

I was born a woman

I live a woman

but I can die as good as any man.

This poem is inspired by the women of the Beat Generation. 

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Let's Do the Time Warp Again, in which we are asked to write as someone from  the year 1958.