Society and the World

My visionary anger cleansing my sight.

i speak for none of you now, all you plotters of perfect crimes, nor for me, nor for anyone. i speak for those who can’t speak, for the deaf and dumb witnesses, for otters and seals, for the ancient owls of the earth.

As I sit looking out of a window of the building I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED! there is no snow in Hollywood there is no rain in California I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday three days after Bastille Day, yes it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner and I don’t know the people who will feed me

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday three days after Bastille Day, yes it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.

America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

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

America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys.

America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys.

America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys.

The individual is the product of power.

The individual is the product of power.

Springtime for Hitler and Germany, Deutschland is happy and gay. We’re moving to a faster pace, Look out, here comes the Master Race!

Marrying left your maiden name disused.

Big Bessie’s feet hurt like nobody’s business, but she stands—bigly—under the unruly scrutiny, stands in the wild weed. In the wild weed she is a citizen.

Maud went to college. Sadie stayed at home. Sadie scraped life With a fine-tooth comb.

Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; These five kings did a king to death.

The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; These five kings did a king to death.

They dance between their arclamps and our skull, Impose their shots, throwing the nights away. We watch the show of shadows kiss or kill, Flavoured of celluloid give love the lie.

My steps along this street Resound in another street In which I hear my steps Passing along this street In which Only the mist is real.