WHO RUNS AMERICA? by Allen Ginsberg
Oil brown smog over Denver
Oil red dung colored smoke
level to level across the horizon
blue tainted sky above
Oil car smog gasoline
hazing red Denver's day
December bare trees
sticking up from housetop streets
Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over
radar wheels, black smoke
drifts from tailfins
Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains
Oil from Texas, Bahrein, Venezuela Mexico
Oil that turns General Motors
revs up Ford
lights up General Electric, oil that crackles
thru International Business Machine computers,
charges dynamos for ITT
sparks Western Electric
runs thru Amer Telephone & Telegraph wires
Oil that flows thru Exxon New Jersey hoses,
rings in Mobil gas tank cranks, rumbles
Chrysler engines
shoots thru Texaco pipelines
blackens ocean from broken Gulf tankers
spills onto Santa Barbara beaches from
Standard of California derricks offshore.
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Copyright © 1974 by Allen Ginsberg from Mind Breaths All rights reserved
by the Allen Ginsberg Estate. Used by permission of the estate and its executor.
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Prophetic Quote from HOWL by Allen Ginsberg:
"….Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and
banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a
cloud of sexless hydrogen! ….
Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon!
Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!....
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind
capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite
cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons!
lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood!...”
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Death to Van Gogh's Ear
Poet is Priest
Money has reckoned the soul of America
Congress broken thru the precipice of Eternity
the president built a War machine which will vomit and rear Russia out of
Kansas
The American Century betrayed by a mad Senate which no longer sleeps with
its wife.
Franco has murdered Locra the fairy son of Whitman
just as Maykovsky committed suicide to avoid Russia
Hart Crane distinguished Platonist committed suicide to cave in the wrong
America
just as Million tons of human wheat were burned in secret caverns under
the White House
while India starved and screamed and ate mad dogs full of rain
and mountains of eggs were reduced to white powder in the halls of Congress
no Godfearing man will walk there again because of the stink of the rotten eggs
of America
and the Indians of Chiapas continue to gnaw their vitaminless tortillas
a borigines of Australia perhaps gibber in the eggless wilderness
and I rarely have an egg for breakfast tho my work requires infinite eggs
to come to birth in Eternity
eggs should be eaten or given to their mothers
and the grief of the countless chickens of America is expressed in the screaming
of her comedians over the radio
Detroit has built a million automobiles of rubber trees and phantoms
but I walk, I walk, and the Orient walks with me, and all Africa walks
And sooner or later North America will walk
for as we have driven the Chinese Angel from our door he will drive us
from the Golden Door of future
we have not cherished pity on Tanganyika
Einstein alive was mocked for his heavenly politics
Bertrand Russell driven from New York for getting laid
immortal Chaplin driven form our shores with a rose in his teeth
a secret conspiracy by Catholic Church in the lavatories of Congress has denied
contraceptives to the unceasing masses of India.
Nobody publishes a word that is not the cowardly robot ravings of a depraved
mentality
The day of the publication of true literature of the American body will be day of
Revolution
the revolution of the sexy lamb
the only bloodless revolution that gives away corn
poor Genet will illuminate the harvesters of Ohio
Marijuana is a benevolent narcotic but J. Edgar Hoover prefers his deathly
Scotch
And the heroin of Lao-Tze & the Sixth Patriarch is punished by the electric chair
but the poor sick junkies have nowhere to lay their heads
fiends in our government have invented a cold-turkey cure for addiction as obsolete
as the Defence Early Warning Radar System.
I am the defence Early Earning Radar System
I see nothing but bombs
I am not interested in preventing Asia from being Asia
and the governments of Russia and Asia will rise and fall but Asia and Russia will
not fall
The government of America also will fall but how can America fall
I doubt if anyone will ever fall anymore except governments
fortunately all the governments will fall
the only ones which won't fall are the good ones
and the good ones don't yet exist
But they have no being existing they exist in my poems
they exist in the death of the Russian and American governments
they exist in the death of Hart Crane & Mayakovsky
Now is the time of prophecy without death as a consequence
the universe will ultimately disappear
Hollywood will rot on the windmills of Eternity
Hollywood whose movies stick in the throat of God
Yes Hollywood will get what it deserves
Time
Seepage of nerve-gas over the radio
History will make this poem prophetic and its awful silliness a hideous spiritual
music
I have the moan of doves and the feather of ecstasy
Man cannot long endure the hunger of the cannibal abstract
War is abstract
the world will be destroyed
but I will die only for poetry, that will save the world
Monument to Socco & Vanzetti not yet financed to ennoble Boston
Natives of Kenya tormented by idiot con-men from England
South Africa in the grip of hte white fool
Vachel Lindsay Secretary of Interior
Poe Secretary of Imagination
Pound Secty. Economics
and Kra belongs to Kra, and Pukti to Pukti
cross fertilization of Blok and Artaud
Van Gogh's ear on the currency
no more propaganda for monsters
and poets should stay out of politics or become monsters
I have become monstrous with politics
the Russian poet undoubtedly monstrous in his secret notebook
Tibet should be left alone
These are obvious prophecies
America will be destroyed
Russian poets will struggle with Russia
Whitman warned against this "Fabled Damned of nations"
Where was Theodore Roosevelt when he sent out ultimatums from his castle
in Camden
Where was the House of Representatives when Crane read aloud from his
Prophetic Books
What was Wall Street scheming when Lindsay announced the doom of Money
Were they listening to my ravings in the locker rooms of Bricksford Employment
Offices?
Did they bend their ears to the moans of my soul when I struggled with market
research statistics in the Forum of Rome?
No they were fighting in their fiery offices , on the carpets of heartfailure, screaming and
bargaining with Destiny
fighting the Skeleton with sabers, muskets, buck-teeth, indigestion, bombs of
larceny, whoredom, rockets, and pederasty,
back to the wall to build up their wives and apartments, lawns, suburbs, fairydoms,
Puerto Ricans crowded for massacre on 114th St. for the sake of an imitation
Chinese-Moderne refrigerator
Elephants of mercy murdered for the sake of the Elizabethan birdcage
millions of agitated fanatics in the bughouse for the sake of the screaming
soprano of industry
Money-chant of soapers -- toothpaste apes in television sets deodorizers on
hypnotic chairs --
petroleum mongers in Texas -- jet plane streaks among the clouds --
sky writers liars in the face of Divinity-- fanged butchers of hats and shoes,
all Owners! Owners! Owners! with obsession on property and vanished
Selfhood!
and their long editorials on the fence of the screaming negro attacked by ants crawled
out of the front page!
Machinery of a mass electrical dream! A war-creating whore of Babylon
bellowing over Capitols and Academies!
Money! Money! Money! shrieking mad celestial money of illusion! Money made
of nothing, starvation, suicide! Money of failure! Money of death!
Money against Eternity! and eternity's strong mills grind out vast paper of
Illusion!
Paris, 1958
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Oringinally published in Kaddish and Other Poems 1958-1960, City Lights Books: San Francisco: CA. (C) 1961 by Allen Ginsberg. Used by courtesy of the Estate of Allen Ginsbeg. All rights, including electronic, are reserved. Copyright (C) 1957 to 2014 by the Estate of Allen Ginsberg. With thanks to the Executor of the Ginsberg Estate.
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