…he spoke truth, truth all oil-splashed steel and iron carnage twisted truth, twisted up by cold war red scare, “his mommie was a commie” what will he do, turn her in? or rather read kaddish ashes, and angel forgivenesses, mother angel forgivenesses over her grave, although he could not forgive, then anyway, the red scare cold war night, and railed against moloch, railed against Time magazine, railed against General Motors business suits, and spoke some funny off-hand truth running underground in some ‘Frisco town garage filled with speechless bow down poets, hipsters and other nomenclatura of new age desolation angel peaks.
Now famous, or, no, infamous, he could speak, Whitman shoulder speak, Whitman queer shoulder speak, Whitman queer shoulder 20th century America rusted leaves of grass prophet speak, speak to make every thinking man wish for just that moment, just that fresh warm breeze 1956 moment blowing over artic worlds, that he too could take up his queer (hell, straight , if that was the hand he was dealt) shoulders against monster moloch (spewing oils, and metals, and atoms , and, well, plastic out into the drive-in, billboard highway night) , against the dread of the negro streets (not Saturday night 125th street joy, flash suit, flash car, flash spindle dope, flash women , a few white, but Monday morning bus, back of the bus, back of the line), against the death bombs (mega, kilo what?) against the convenient, very convenient, loony farms (to adjust to Ike’s social reality of course) where they put his, the Whitman prophet’s poor downtrodden queer head.
And that thinking man, if only for a moment, could find some solace, some tea high divine solace in a renegade quasi-Trotskyite girl’s arms , bourgeois to the core, all cashmere sweater and girl next door beautiful, but slumming in Village, in Soho, in Ann Arbor Quadrangle, in Chi town Chi school Old Town, in Red Fez North Beach jazz night clubs listening for that one high white note drifting toward the bay, walking with her king hell king walking daddy before she goes back to Riverside (read Mill Valley, read Grosse Pointe, read Forest Lawn, read Wellesley) and that handsome johnnie stockbroker after she found out those million, count them, one million Trotskyites turned out to be Irving Howe and the ghost of Max Shachtman and so came up a little short on the prophet number, and a quick call from J. Edgar’s boys clinched it. Jesus.
And that Whitman prophet left just then to shoulder, queer shoulder to high heaven before his om om time, before his robes and incense and sticks and bells and whatever time beloved names, communist, beloved names Trotskyite (even if short 999, 000), beloved names, Sacco and Vanzetti and ban death ban death penalty, beloved names, Abraham Lincoln Brigade and premature anti-fascist Spanish red blood soil fights, beloved names, beleaguered old labor fighter Tom Mooney abandoned, beloved names, on and on hoping, hoping against that red scare cold war night, all dark and foreboding, that he, that thinking man he could have put some bruised shoulder to some wheel too…
…hence Allen Ginsberg
**********America
Allen Ginsberg
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia. I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again. Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
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