If you haven’t seen High School Confidential, a 1958 cult classic, then do so at once. But if you’ve only got a few minutes, do yourself a favor and watch the “beat poetry” scene, one of the squarest drags you’ve ever seen, cats. (And much less convincing than a similar scene in The Beat Generation.) And yet … strangely plausible as a poem? Heavy, man. Heavy. 

My old man was a bread stasher all his life. He never got fat.
He wound up with a used car, a seventeen-inch screen, and arthritis.
Tomorrow is a drag, man, tomorrow is a king-size bust.

They cried, “Put down pot. Don’t think a lot.” For what?
Time how much and what to do with it.
Sleep, man, and you might wake up diggin’ the whole human race,
Givin’ itself three days to get out.
Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake.

I had a canary who couldn’t sing.
I had a cat that let me share my pad with her.
I bought a dog that killed the cat that ate the canary.
What is truth?

I had an uncle with an ivy-league car.
He had life with a belt in the back.
He had a button-down brain.
Wind up a belt in the mouth and a button-down lip.

He coughed blood on this earth.
Now there’s a race for space.
We can cough blood on the moon soon.
Tomorrow is dragsville, cats. Tomorrow is a king-size drag.

Hula fast shorts, swing with a gassy chick,
Turn on to a thousand joys, smile on what happened,
Then check what’s gonna happen, you’ll miss what’s happening.
Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.
Tomorrow, drag.