Poem America -Allen Ginsberg

Poem America -Allen Ginsberg

I had  read this in collage and now, I taken a course in poetry.  It's a satire written by Allen Ginsberg.  We all felt this way one time or another( I have many times!!) I hope you enjoy it as much as I did; please comment and let me know what it means to you and what you thought about it. 

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 1935 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.

Poem America By Allen Ginsberg 1956. work in collection: American favorite poems.



posted by: PastorDave (reply)
post date: 02.11.06 (7:59 am)

First time I have read it. Here is a quick response from a quick reading: Sounds like someone who is full of himself. Proud of his drug use. Proud of his unproductive, busybody lifestyle. Proud of his connection with communism. I can picture him sitting in a park in Berkley, long hair and beard and guitar, playing songs for quarters dropped into his cup.

I grew up in a town 40 miles from Scottsboro. That is truly a sad story. Injustice. The South and race relations are now better, perhaps a little because folks like Ginsburg sat in California and wrote their poems.



posted by: TaBooTenente (reply)
post date: 02.12.06 (6:36 am)

pastor,

well, someone, maybe ginsburg, had to have a conscience. then the rest of the country could feel better about themselves.

someone always has to take it for the rest of us who refuse to let ourselves think that there might be a better way, or, at least, another way.

taboo




posted by: TaBooTenente (reply)
post date: 02.12.06 (6:37 am)

hey dan,

busy busy, sorry i havent been by to check out the shop. how;s the forum going?

taboo




posted by: danielmacdonald (reply)
post date: 02.12.06 (8:06 am)

Hi may had it with the war and the politics. we all know the white house is all straight forward and hones with us(Yea right) the beat nics of the 50's or hippies of the 60 did write a lot a great poetry and speak out what they thought. This person seem tired and dissatisfied with the things going on here in America.
tabboo: good to see you again and hope all is there in LA. it's snowing here as I write this.

pastor: think you for your thoughts and I am sure their are a lot of ways to read this poem and how he meant his work to viewed.

Dan MacDonald



posted by: sweetsue (reply)
post date: 02.12.06 (9:01 am)

Amen!...awesome...I am also tired of all the war,the politicans and the crap that is going on in American..great post dan^-^



posted by: danielmacdonald (reply)
post date: 02.12.06 (9:05 am)

Reply to: sweetsue
yes, am for helping them but its going on to long!! but this poem was form Vietnam era. he seem fed up with the war,economics and the way things going in the US. jobs and the rest of it. thanks for commenting. - Dan



posted by: TaBooTenente (reply)
post date: 02.12.06 (6:16 pm)

ar, im in boston, actually, and we've got about 18"--OF SNOW.

i threw down a response on your forum, by the way, and checked out your book wish list. has anyone ever bought you a book using that list, before?

taboo


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