Society and the World

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks

How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man?… The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man?… The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

You lose more of yourself than you redeem Doing the decent thing.

A word after a word after a word is power.

Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands.

Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands.

There is no Jewish blood in my veins, But I am hated with a scabby hatred By all the anti-Semites, like a Jew. And therefore I am a true Russian.

Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.

A living doll, everywhere you look. It can sew, it can cook, It can talk, talk, talk…. My boy, it’s your last resort. Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

The Caribbean was borne like an elliptical basin in the hands of acolytes, and a people were absolved of a history which they did not commit.

The tourist archipelagoes of my South are prisons too, corruptible, and though there is no harder prison than writing verse, what’s poetry, if it is worth its salt, but a phrase men can pass from hand to mouth?

I who am poisoned with the blood of both, Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who have cursed The drunken officer of British rule, how choose Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?

I am the androgyne.

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.