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. Business-
        men 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 an hour 
        and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions. 
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of 
        underprivileged 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 Com-
        munist 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 sin-
        cere you have no idea what a good thing the 
        party was in 1835 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't 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 Readers' 
        Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. 
        Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
        tions. 
That no good. Ugh. Him make 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. 

                                Berkeley, January 17, 1956

Added: on May 28th, 2007 at 4:27 PM | Viewed: 16205 times | Comments (15)

Poet: Allen Ginsberg
Poem: America
Volume: Howl and Other Poems
Year: Published/Written in 1956
Poem of the Day: Jan 18 2004

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