ALLEN GINSBERG'S "AMERICA" (AND OURS)

by Robert Knox

“America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.” 

—Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems, 1956

 

I am frankly envious of the poet who, on Jan. 17, 1956,

wrote, in a poem entitled “America,”

“America, go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.”

 

Tennessee, I invite, in the same spirit of candor,

go shoot yourself with your absolutely unqualified no-foolin’, stand-your-ground

irredeemably nut-case gun rights laws,

per events on the ground taking place March 28, 2023.

I could simply echo every sentiment in that mid-century poet’s inspired piece

     of unbridled spontaneity

composed on the theme of his America, in which he that mid-century poet vowed,

amid other proclamations,

“I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind”…

but I do not expect to be in my right mind

so long as the YMCA in which I seek to run away from my fury and despair

offers news channels on its TV service available to rats like me

who run on treadmills of anger and despair

 

Networks, that is, on which the munitions-injury expert

is asked to describe the effect of AR ammunition on the bodies of children,

and what I increasingly wish somebody (even crazier than me) would do

to the persons of the elected Tennessee officials

who valiantly protected their freedom-loving constituents from any limitation,

however slight and publicly supported by official law enforcement,

on their natural right to destroy the bodies of children

with whatever armaments the Good Lord, acting through the protected mediation

    of the National Rats Association,

entitles them to possess

 

“America,” Ginsberg demanded in his disarming and eternally youthful way:

“when will you take your clothes off?”

“America” – how’s this for pre-visioning the paramilitary far right?—

“why are your libraries full of tears?”

 

America, we ask in our hair-tearing, torn-clothing way,

Why are your courthouses, state houses, ballot boxes and school boards

full of self-made demagogues who failed to read the books

in their now besieged schoolhouses when they had the chance?

who think that libraries are merely back alleyways for the gang fights

     of the culture wars?

America, we ask, why do the voters of Tennessee develop amnesia of the ballot box?

When will it end, America, your war on humanity?

When will you be worthy of your blues singers, jazzmen, street corner poets,

         dancers on the page as well as on the stage?

When will you invite Stephen Colbert to be the speaker at the next inauguration?

America, the cherry trees are blossoming

and I feel sentimental about the days of wine and roses and that legendary decade ban

     on assault rifles…

and even when the party of Richard Nixon was, by comparison, a beacon of moderation

Americans, we are obsessed by media, by the Chinese timebomb that goes TikTok, TikTok

 

America, the best minds of my generation are already underground

America, there is nobody left to vote for

America, our ancestors saved the world from fascism

But all the fascists have to do today is show their pure-white fannies on TV

and the writing on the wall goes tic-toc-clock, as the timebomb of private self-interest

     melts the glaciers

and brings the ocean to your living room

just before the signoff of the foxed and phony nooz

 

America, you are teaching all the world how to kill people,

     best result for the buck

Because that is all you remember how to do

Robert Knox is a poet, fiction writer, Boston Globe correspondent, and the author of the recently published collection of linked short stories, titled House Stories. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal Verse-Virtual, his poems appear regularly on that site.

THE RELEVANCE OF ALLEN GINSBERG

by Indran Amirthanayagam

I have one more story to share about Allen Ginsberg. I was at Columbia
studying journalism, stressed utterly, with no time for poetry, trying
to get the nut graph right and learning to control my bladder to last
through the news conference and the follow-up interview. Then

I learned that Allen was to feature at a club downtown. Memories
of Honolulu, of our first meeting when he sang Sweet Oahu in the car
playing the harmonium. He told me then to cut half the first draft out.
I could not resist seeing him again so despite the heavy reporting load,

I took the subway down the West Side and walked East. He asked me
if I would read in the Open. I could not refuse. And I read my poem
about the 241 marines bombed in Beirut. And he told me he liked
the tat-a-tat rhymes and story but did not care for the doubting end.

He said you have to take a stance then say it. I am saying it now.
Get rid of the dissembler, hoodlum and pussy-grabber. Get rid of
the thou shalt not enter and the latrine supervisor. Get rid of
the one who would be king. Get rid of the golden tamarind toupee.

Get him out of the people's house. Then speak to me
about the humming birds and next year's cherry blossoms. .

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.

FOR WALT AND ALLEN

by Rick Gray

                                                                 

My name is announced before takeoff.
It’s JFK again, but this is a new terminal.
I haul my carry-on past rich kids pouting
In First-Class, already juiced,
 and step back onto the homeland.

Outside waits a man in a blue uniform and a silver badge.
“Are you a writer?” he asks.  There are tribal scars
On his fat cheeks.  I don’t ask.
“Follow me,” he tells me, and we walk together back
Down the tube to America. Our footsteps echo out of rhythm.

At the American Airlines check-out desk ten men are hovering over
my lost notebook of poems. I relapsed in the wine bar and my God punishes.
A man no older than thirty introduces himself as Tim from the Terrorism Task Force.
I told him I was not impressed, and that I believe in respect for elders.
I’m very traditional that way, Tim. Maybe it was my years in Africa when I lived in a hut.
Tim’s training did not include humor and, confused, he steps away.                                                          

The Boss moves in, a man with the pink alcoholic shade my ancestors taught me.
His face looks frozen in 1974. Very pre 9/11, with a suit that looks
lifted from the costume room of The French Connection.
“You’re a poet?” he starts. “You said it,” I swing back at him, “not me.”
“ A woman found your notebook and was very alarmed,” he frowns.
I try to break his Popeye scowl with a grin. He goes grim.

“Your poem called Bomb Threat is of concern,” he continues,
Lifting a torn page out of my notebook. Everything is written in green.
“And your comments about Homeland Security we all find curious.”
“That shit is weird,” the black guy with the scars exclaims. Everyone nods before
French Connection waves them still.

“I’m missing my plane,” I say, and a cop tells me to forget about flight.
“What was your destination?” another one asks.
I am going to Afghanistan to teach Shakespeare, I calmly explain.
I finally get my first laugh. But when I tell them to go fuck themselves, fascist pigs,
They’re back to business with my notebooks.     

But not I.
No, I now have a growing audience of passengers for the Paris flight
And I was raised not to waste. Children are starving in Africa.
THIS IS NOT AMERICA! I shout to them.                                                                                  
I AM BEING HELD FOR POETRY! I cry, and don’t know why I raise my fist.
This must be the oral thrill of the spoken word I’ve read about    
And I can feel Whitman and Ginsberg grinning below the New York dirt of JFK.
“Front page!” I bluff to the boss, flushed with my little fame, “New York Times!”
and pull out another notebook and start writing, staring into his badge.

Walkie-talkies come out and soon an alternative ticket is being printed.
They give an Irish cop the job of returning my notebooks; no one else will touch them.
“Hold onto these,” he gives me a wink I might, in a better mood, call Whitmanesque.
“It’s a shitty job,“ he apologizes as I take back my poems and head to another gate.
“Any good publications?” I hear him call out to me.
“Nope,” I shout back, “my job sucks too.”

Oh America, I don’t want to leave you!
I want to stay and write poems that make men huddle in airports!
I want to be pulled off your American Airlines and asked by scarred men if I’m a writer!
I want to make speeches about liberty to passengers to Paris!
I want to alarm everyone in the country!
But instead I’m off to another stupid war
To pay for my daughter’s ballet.
No one in America responds to my resume,
only these lost notebooks that don’t pay.
So before I step away from my homeland
I get one last jab at the Irish cop trailing me.
“I’m coming back soon!” I shout back at him from the tube.
“And we’ll be waiting!” he calls back to me, waving a little blue book.


Rick Gray served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and currently teaches at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. He was a finalist for the Editor's Award at Margie, and has an essay that will be appearing in the forthcoming book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock. When not in Kabul, he lives with his wife Ghizlane and twin daughters Rania and Maria in Florida.

MY GUNS ARE NAMED JESUS

by S

Image source: Kind of Creepy

                        for Wayne and Ted

Before I slide between the sheets each night
I kneel and pray to my guns
All 352 dozing in the safes
I call them Jesus

I pray to them they'll never leave
I pray to them for loyalty and inspiration
To commit the be all to end all gun crime
And then I realize there'll never be
What anti-gunners call the tipping point
The tipping point will never occur
Too many people like me are out there

Jesus, why are you so beautiful
In blue and black steel
Home to majestic barrels of death
Why do you seduce me
With holy matrimony
Of terror and helpless innocence

My aunt told me angels of the Bible
Were men with girls' faces
That means they're devious monsters
That means you can call me the angel of mayhem

There is no tipping point
Never will be a tipping point
But I pray I change that
I pray to my companions of love
My instruments of evil
That I'll be the tipping point
The be all to end all

Allen Ginsberg called everything holy
Only the gun is holy
Its supplicants for war and murder are holy
The bountiful bullet is holy
The magazine is holy
The trigger is holy
I'm holy in my embrace of the tipping point

America go fuck yourself with your assault rifles

When I'm alone with Glocks and Colts
And Sig Sauers and Berettas and M-16s
I dream of the last day that'll bless me
With colors of flame and blood
I'd rather be with them
Than a woman who's kind
I'd rather stroke, clean, and wash them
In the oily rags they lie in
Stacked in the safes dreaming

I have too many heroes to mention
Granddaddy of us all
Charles Whitman in the Texas Tower
The two Columbine creeps
The Batman bozo from Colorado
The Newtown nerd baby blaster
Too many to recall
Way too many

When I was small my mother and father
Bought me play guns but never real ones
They gave me a Davy Crockett rifle
And a Roy Rogers revolver
A squirt gun I loaded with piss
A plastic machine gun from Company A
I had more guns as a kid than I do now
But they were fart jokes

I started amassing real ones
All dull steel and forged from sins
Of kind ancestors who earned this land
By killing anybody in the way
Of their manifest destiny
The more I shopped the more I wanted to buy
The more I stockpiled the lovelier they grew
I began to name each one a different name
But then decided they were the Son of God
So I called them Jesus

Jesus protect me in weak moments
Protect me against criminals and miscreants
Who aren't the same color as I am
Protect me against anybody that breaks into this mansion
Protect me against the asshole who pisses me off
Allow me to succumb to no one but you
Bless me with kind and gentle holiness
Caress me like dark women I'll never love

One day decades ago a slick punk pulled
A revolver on me and two sisters
They screamed and before he knew it
I slugged him in the mouth
Grabbed the gun from his skinny hands
And stuck it in his crotch
Pulling the trigger as he begged
When I smelled the smoke I smiled
That was my first gun and first kill
My first hallelujah of sweet horror

My guns are my savior
My guns are my life
I love and protect my guns
As they love and protect me
That's why I call them Jesus
The be all to end all

Two of my favorite gun scenes in movies
Are the Russian Roulette suicide in The Deer Hunter
When Walken wears a bandanna of blood
And when Stallone blasts away
In Rambo with an M60
Now those are righteous kills

I have a room full of gun videos
The Sniper movies, How to Clean Guns Blindfolded
The Jackal with Willis remote controlling
His First Lady carnage
All of them better than titties and ass
And fuck video games because
They're not real enough to get my rocks off

I'm gonna be the be all to end all
The tipping point to tip the balance

I'll sneak into the Academy Awards a week early
Wait for days in a cubby hole
With bags of chips and cases of beer
Hide where no one sees me until it's too late
And pull out Jesus in their black beauty
And imminent destruction
Mowing down glamor icons of America
Hundreds of them in gowns and tuxes
Like the glory hogs they are
Their brains and limbs decorate the hall
Closing credits to end their stupid lives
And I'll own the fame I crave and deserve
More fame than they could ever have
Because I love Jesus with my heart and soul

I'll be the be all to end all
The final tipping point
Of all tipping points

The ultimate glory hog.