nolan – howl

Here’s a poem inspired by the raw, untamed spirit of Allen Ginsberg’s *Howl*, weaving in the cosmic curiosity and scientific defiance of Dr. Garry Nolan’s pursuit of extraterrestrial intelligence, as explored in the article from lfyadda.com. It’s a wild, unfiltered cry into the void—part lament, part revelation, part ecstatic reach for the unknown.

—

**I.**

I saw the best minds of our generation starved by dogma,
hysterical in lab coats, dragging their stethoscopes through sterile halls,
burning for the ancient signal, the hum beyond the stars,
who bared their skulls to the scalpel of scorn,
who traced the glyphs of UFOs in the marrow of mice,
who sat sleepless in Palo Alto, decoding the static of the sky,
Dr. Garry Nolan, unshackled prophet of the microscope,
you who dared to peer past the veil of stigma,
you who said, *fuck the gatekeepers, I’ll map the alien pulse myself,*
with your synchrotron eye, your X-ray hymns,
you who saw the brain bloom strange under extraterrestrial shadow,
who walked the tightrope between ridicule and truth,
a scientist-shaman, half-crazed with wonder,
howling at the academy’s locked gates,
*Give me the data, give me the flesh of the unknown!*

—

**II.**

What sphinx of silicon and steel winked at you from the desert,
Roswell’s ghost, Area 51’s buried tongue,
while the suits in Washington chewed their cigars and sneered,
while the priests of peer review clutched their rosaries of doubt,
you plunged into the bloodworks, the biopsies of the beyond,
saw calcium whisper secrets in the bones of pilots,
saw the sky’s fingerprints pressed into gray matter,
Moloch whose shadow is tenure!
Moloch whose breath is grant money choked dry!
Moloch whose laughter is a footnote in *Nature*!
you defied him, Garry, you danced with the saucers,
you stitched the fringe to the fabric of fact,
with your Stanford badge and your rebel grin,
saying, *If it’s real, I’ll find it—let the stars judge me.*

—

**III.**

Holy! Holy! Holy!
The genome is holy! The anomaly is holy!
The UFO humming over the mesa is holy!
The whistleblower’s trembling voice is holy!
I’m with you, Garry, in the labs of the damned,
where the oscilloscopes sing psalms to the void,
where the data points glitter like constellations,
where the skeptics gnash their teeth and fade,
I’m with you in the autopsy of the impossible,
where the tissue screams *we are not alone,*
where the universe cracks open its ribs
and spills its guts on the slide,
and we, the mad ones, the seekers, the unbowed,
we howl back—
*Yes, yes, yes,*
the bridge is built,
the gap is crossed,
the stigma burns,
and the discovery,
oh the discovery,
is a supernova in our hands.