Effects of a Howl

I just read Allen Ginsberg's Howl (for Carl Solomon), and I feel stuck. I have YET to read an American poet like him, and I'm shocked. America is a :melting pot: of cultures, creativity, determination and endless fixations, so how have I not come across anybody that was able to make me read 8 pages of rantings of a psychopathic Jewish (?) man before?? In that regard.. the Effects of a Howl...

Sirens blaring,
the helicopters are alive again.
Flashing lights, gun shots
a baby crying.
Cigarette butts and the
stench of a dutch,
..a heart beat elevated.
Foot steps too close behind at 10:19pm,
panic.
No worries in these streets,
he won't get to me. I am these streets,
I think.

Foot steps closer now, but I'm almost home,
he won't follow me.
Helicopter still alive,
darkness spreads across the sky.
I am not afraid but I am brave,
he WILL NOT follow me.

For I am not a child but a woman of the night,
A woman in a place willing to put up quite the fight.
"Do not fear the night," I hear myself say to me,
I break into a run and the footsteps fade behind me.
Cigarette butts and the
stench of a dutch.
I wasn't scared
... much.

But this is not my home,
I'm a stranger in this place.
the helicopter's alive,
the sirens own the night.
Not I.

I am of another place,
one that tends to sleep,
But if you have insomnia,
like me,
you don't have to sleep.
"The City that Doesn't Sleep."
That's the place of me.

I am of another place,
one where at night
I do not race.
Home is all these streets to me,
and fear will never win,
Cigarette butts and the
stench of a dutch,
do not exist here.

But my streets are not bare,
the baby does still cry,
When I reach "home" at night
I stop to watch the sky.
I listen to the night.
No sirens.
No helicopters are alive.
No footsteps linger behind me.
No man I cannot see.

I stop to watch the sky,
for the sound of the wind soothes me.
But sleep does not become me,
so again I leave.

Howl for my streets
Howl for my night,
Howl to the sky, and
Howl for a fight.
Cigarette butts and the
stench of a dutch,
do not exist here for me.
"The City that Doesn't Sleep"
eventually they will find me.