America.
I just gave the best reading of America by Allen Ginsberg that anyone has ever given. I performed it for myself, sitting on the edge of my bed and looking into the mirror. Very drunk. I was intimidated by the fact that I was giving the best performance of America by Allen Ginsberg anyone had ever given and simultaneously intimidated by the fact that I was watching, with the sole privilege of watching, someone give the best performance of America by Allen Ginsberg that anyone had ever given.
It is lost to history now. I will probably not remember it very well when I am sober; I already don't remember it very well now, just moments later. I understood this while I was watching it. That was what made it so intimidating: There would be no chance to look back and appreciate it, it was something that was only happening now and never any time else.
Like my whole life.
I present to you, for reference, America by Allen Ginsberg:
America.
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 you 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 'til 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?
When will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands
When can I go to 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.
America are you being sinister or is this some for 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,
Every day someone goes on trial for murder.
America, I still feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America, I used to be a communist when I was a kid,
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.
Whenever I go to chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up.
There's going to be trouble.
You have seen me reading Marx.
My therapist thinks I'm perfectly right,
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America,
I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max when he came over from Russia.
I am addressing you.
Do you want your emotional life to be run by Time Magazine?
I am obsessed by Time Magazine,
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me as I slink past the corner candy store.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility.
Businessmen are serious.
Movieproducers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I'm talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me,
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd best take account of my national resources.
My national resources consist of
Two joints of marijuana,
Millions of genitals,
An unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 M P H
And 25,000 mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons,
Nor the millions of underprivileged
Who live beneath my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have already abolished the whorehouses of France.
Tangiers' are the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America,
How can I write my holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue,
Like Henry Ford,
My strophes are as individual as his automobiles,
Moreso, 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.
I am the Scotsborough boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to communist cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket cost 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 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man, a real mensche, mother Bloor made me cry, I once saw Israel Ampter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians,
Them Russians and them Russians and them Chinamen, and them Russians.
The Russians want to eat us alive.
The Russia's power-mad!
Her want to take our cars from out of our garages.
Her want to grab Chicago.
Her need red readerses digestseses.
Her wants our autoplants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our filling stations.
Augh! That no good!
Him make Indian learn read!
Him need big black niggers!
Augh!
Her make us all work sixteen hours a day, help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get when I look into the television set,
America, is this correct?
If so, 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 near-sighted and psychopathic anyway.
America,
I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
---
This poem probably marked the beginning of me as a human being so it's appropriate to use it to commemorate me as the end of one.
It is lost to history now. I will probably not remember it very well when I am sober; I already don't remember it very well now, just moments later. I understood this while I was watching it. That was what made it so intimidating: There would be no chance to look back and appreciate it, it was something that was only happening now and never any time else.
Like my whole life.
I present to you, for reference, America by Allen Ginsberg:
America.
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 you 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 'til 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?
When will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands
When can I go to 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.
America are you being sinister or is this some for 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,
Every day someone goes on trial for murder.
America, I still feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America, I used to be a communist when I was a kid,
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.
Whenever I go to chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up.
There's going to be trouble.
You have seen me reading Marx.
My therapist thinks I'm perfectly right,
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America,
I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max when he came over from Russia.
I am addressing you.
Do you want your emotional life to be run by Time Magazine?
I am obsessed by Time Magazine,
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me as I slink past the corner candy store.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility.
Businessmen are serious.
Movieproducers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I'm talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me,
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd best take account of my national resources.
My national resources consist of
Two joints of marijuana,
Millions of genitals,
An unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 M P H
And 25,000 mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons,
Nor the millions of underprivileged
Who live beneath my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have already abolished the whorehouses of France.
Tangiers' are the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America,
How can I write my holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue,
Like Henry Ford,
My strophes are as individual as his automobiles,
Moreso, 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.
I am the Scotsborough boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to communist cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket cost 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 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man, a real mensche, mother Bloor made me cry, I once saw Israel Ampter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians,
Them Russians and them Russians and them Chinamen, and them Russians.
The Russians want to eat us alive.
The Russia's power-mad!
Her want to take our cars from out of our garages.
Her want to grab Chicago.
Her need red readerses digestseses.
Her wants our autoplants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our filling stations.
Augh! That no good!
Him make Indian learn read!
Him need big black niggers!
Augh!
Her make us all work sixteen hours a day, help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get when I look into the television set,
America, is this correct?
If so, 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 near-sighted and psychopathic anyway.
America,
I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
---
This poem probably marked the beginning of me as a human being so it's appropriate to use it to commemorate me as the end of one.