I stood in the room I thought alone reading the phoneticized lines aloud….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….and I realized two small ladies were standing in the corner, staring at me. I continued, louder. Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness…. The ladies fled.

Howl still works, apparently.

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl by Allen Ruppersberg at the Skirball Museum.