Home > Work > Howl and Other Poems
41 " No rest without love,No sleepwithout dreamsof love -be mad or chillobsessed with angelsor machinesthe final wishis love. "
― Allen Ginsberg , Howl and Other Poems
42 " I saw the best minds of my generation who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade. "
43 " We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessedby our own seed & hairy nakedaccomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision. "
44 " ..who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, and alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse and the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion and the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising and the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality.. "
45 " I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?What price bananas? Are you my Angel? "
46 " I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked...who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war...who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall...who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts... "
47 " America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. America two dollars and twentyseven 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 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 your 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. ... "
48 " ... who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, ... "
49 " Asia is rising against me.I haven't got a chinaman's chance.I'd better consider my national resources.My national resources cousist of two joints of marijuana millions ofgenitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivilegedwho live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundredsuns.I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the nextto 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 ashis automobiles more so they're all different sexes.America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on yourold stropheAmerica free Tom MooneyAmerica save the Spanish LoyalistsAmerica Sacco & V anzetti must not dieAmerica I am the Scottsboro boys.America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cellmeetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticketa ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were freeeverybody was angelic and sentimental about the workersit was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thingthe party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old mana real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once sawIsrael Amter 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 them Russians and them Chinamen. And themRussians.The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. Shewants to take our cars from out our garages.Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers' Digest.Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracyrunning our fillingstations.That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him needbig black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hoursa day. Help.America this is quite serious.America this is the impression I get from looking in the televisionset.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 precisionparts factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. "
50 " I'm with you in Rocklandwhere you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss "
51 " a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon "
52 " Eliot probabil un ignu unul dintre puținii care e nostim când mănâncă(...)Burroughs cel mai pur ignu tunsoarea lui de culoarea smântânii degetul său mic stângroz retezat din precoce temeiuri de ignu scrieri metafizice scrieri de iubiri psihanaliticebiografia sa de narcoman o înfăptuire mai presus de un milion de dolariCéline el însuși un bătrân ignu stăpânind prozal-am văzut în Paris bătrân ramolit gentilom cu conversația poticnită cu truse de artist și trei pulovere călduroase în jurul gâtuluimucegai cafeniu sub legendarele-i unghiide-a dreptul genial împărțind morfină întreaga noapte la 1400 de pasageri pe un vas ce se scufundă,,Fiindcă se emoționaseră cu toții "
53 " with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years. "
54 " The world knows the love that’s in its breast as in the flower, the suffering lonely world. "
55 " the weight we carry is love.Who can deny? In dreamsit touches the body,in thought constructsa miracle, in imaginationanguishes till borninhuman "
56 " I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. "
57 " America, I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. "
58 " I'm with you in Rocklandwhere we hug and kiss the United States under ourbedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won'tlet us sleep "
59 " My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.I won't say the Lord's Prayer.I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. "
60 " Everyman’s an angel! "