Beat Poet’s Corner-Allen Ginsberg’s“America”

…he spoke truth, truth all oil-splashed, steel and iron carnage twisted truth, twisted up by cold war red scare, “his mommie was a commie” what will he do, turn her in? or rather read kaddish ashes, and angel forgivenesses, mother angel forgivenesses over her grave, although he could not forgive, then anyway, the red scare cold war night, and railed against moloch, and the sons and daughters of moloch, railed against Time magazine and it pointy-headed point of view , railed against General Motors business suits, railed against the bad karma night, railed against the cube that they, and he knew who the “they” were, trying to ram down his throat, railed against, well, you get the picture, railed against squeezed in humanity, and spoke some funny off-hand truth running underground in some ‘Frisco town garage, some makeshift gallery they called it maybe in jest, filled with speechless bow down poets sipping Tokay or something like that, hipsters in all shades and other nomenclatura of new age desolation angel peaks.

Now famous, or, no, infamous, he could speak, Whitman shoulder speak, Whitman queer shoulder speak, Whitman queer shoulder 20^th century America rusted leaves of grass prophet speak, speak to make every thinking man wish for just that moment, just that fresh warm breeze 1956 moment blowing over artic worlds, that he too could take up his queer (hell, straight , if that was the hand he was dealt) shoulders against monster moloch (spewing oils, and metals, and atoms , and, well, plastic out into the drive-in diner billboard highway night) , against the dread of the negro streets (not Saturday night 125^th street joy, flash suit, flash car, flash spindle dope, flash women , a few white, but Monday morning bus, back of the bus, back of the line negro streets), against the death bombs (mega, kilo what?) against the convenient, very convenient, loony farms (to adjust to Ike’s social reality of course) where they put his, the Whitman prophet’s poor downtrodden queer head.

And that thinking man, if only for a moment, could find some solace, some tea high divine solace in a renegade quasi-Trotskyite girl’s arms , bourgeois to the core, all cashmere sweater and girl next door beautiful, but slumming in the Village, in Soho, in Ann Arbor Quadrangle, in Chi town Chi school Old Town, in Red Fez North Beach jazz night clubs listening for that one high white note drifting toward the bay, walking with her king hell king walking daddy before she goes back to Riverside (read Mill Valley, read Grosse Pointe, read Forest Lawn, read Wellesley) and that handsome johnnie stockbroker after she found out those million, count them, one million Trotskyites turned out to be Irving Howe and the ghost of Max Shachtman and so came up a little short on the prophet number, and a quick call form J. Edgar’s boys clinched it. Jesus.

And that Whitman prophet left just then to shoulder, queer shoulder to high heaven before his om om time, before his robes and incense and sticks and bells and whatever time beloved names, communist, beloved names Trotskyite (even if short 999, 900), beloved names, Sacco and Vanzetti and ban death ban death penalty, beloved names, Abraham Lincoln Brigade and premature anti-fascist Spanish red blood soil fights, beloved names, beleaguered old labor fighter Tom Mooney abandoned, beloved names, on and on hoping, hoping against that red scare cold war night, all dark and foreboding, that he, that thinking man wishing he could have put some bruised shoulder to some wheel too…

…hence Allen Ginsberg