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My Second Letter to Allen Ginsberg Dear Allen, Almost five years ago, I wrote you a letter, and in That letter, I purged my drunkenly woeful cries That seem so first-world now and naïve – The things I grimed over with luxuries I didn’t Realize that rubbed against my plump limbs Like millions of felines poised at the Tombs of pharaohs. Oh, Allen, I’m so tired – These politics, and poly ticks, so many ticks that Annoy my tics. Allen! I smear your name so liberally Against this paper like primer because the easiest way To coerce someone into listening to you like A mother or predator tugging or nibbling on your ear – Swatches of velvet scalped from a pimp’s coat Are you and I talking to ourselves again? Candid insanity : Smoky hesitance. Dear Allen, I’m so tired – Yes, I love wearing my ovaries on the outside like Some Amazonian soapbox gem glistening from beneath The iron boots of what the newspapers tell me while I cough at them with the hurdled delicacies of alphabet soup. Give vegetables a gender and call them onions, Allen. Sullied scratch-hicks pinioned feet from slapping Society’s last rung on the ladder. Ignore the swerve of small-town eyes. Scapulas, stirrups, pap smears, and cervical mucus – now do you know who we are? That fingernail clipped too short, Allen. We’ve all got AIDs And AIDs babies, haven’t you heard? Hemorrhaging from the political ****** and out – they haven’t reached the heart.   Since when have old white men given a **** about some 13 year old’s birth control? I’m riding on the waves of the Parachute game and I swear this abortion-issue is just a veil outside Tuskegee University Being further shove over plaintive eyes, swollen and black. Pay up and shut up. I still remember my first broken ***** Allen. Can you tell me all about your first time? The vasodilatation that made veins rub against skin, Delirious brilliance : unfathomable electricity. I made love during an LSD experience, Allen, And I am not sorry. I see cosmic visions and Manifest universal vibrations as if this entire world is A dish reverberating with textiles and marbles, and All are plundering the depths of the finished wine Bottle roasting in the sink like Thanksgiving Turkey. The patience is in the living. Time opens out to you. The opening, between you and you, occupied, zoned for an encounter, given the histories of you and you— And always, who is this you? The start of you, each day, a presence already— Hey, you! Ah, Allen, if you are not safe, then I am not safe. And where is the safest place when that place Must be someplace other than in the body? Am I talking to myself again? You are not sick, you are injured— you ache for the rest of life. Why is it that I have to explain to my students that sometimes what I'm spouting is prescribed by a pedagogical pharmacy -- but all they want to know is "what do the symbols on the television mean?" I am completely aghast against the ghosts of future goners -- I am legitimately licensed to speak, write, listen like some mothers -- I am constantly cajoling the complex creations blamed on burned-out educators -- I am following the flagrant, fired-up **** YOU"s tagging lockers -- Pay up and shut up. Yes, and it’s Hopeless. Allen. Where did we get off leaping and bounding into The dogpile for chump change jurisdiction, policing The right and the left for inherent hypocrisies when Poets are so frightful to turn that introspective judgment Upon ourselves? We didn’t see it coming and I heard the flies, Allen. Mean crocodile tears. Flamingo mascara tracks Up and down : up and down: bow – bow – bow – bow Buoyant amongst the misguided ******** floating around In the swirlpool of lackadaisical introspection. What good is vague vocab within poetry? Absolutely none. Would you leave the porchlight on tonight? Absolutely, baby. Dear Allen, would you grow amongst the roots and dirt At the knuckles of a slackjawed brush of Ever-Pondering Questions Only to ask them time-and-time-and-time-and-time-again. Or pinch your forehead with burrowed, furrowed concentration upon those Feeble branches of progression towards something that recedes further And further with as much promise as the loving hand Attempts to guide a lover to the bed? Allen, I wish to see this world feelingly through the vibrations of billions of bodies, rocking and sobbing, plotting and gnashing like the movement of a million snakes, like the curves collecting and riding the parachute-veil. Ah, Allen! Say it ain’t so! Sanctified swerve town eyes. And everything is melting while poets take the weather Too personally And all the Holden Caulfields of the world read all the **** You’s written on the walls and all the Invisible Men Eat Yams and all the Zampanos are blind and blind And blind and blind and blind and blind Yet see as much as Gloucester, as much as Homer, As much as Oedipus. Oh, Allen, do you see this world feelingly and wander around the desert? Colored marbles vibrating on the curtailed parachute paradox. Lamentation of a small town’s onion. Little do we know, Allen, That what you cannot see, we cannot see, and we are bubbling Over in the animal soup of the proud yet weary. I can see, However, how the peeled back skulls of a million Workboots and paystubs may never sully the burden Of an existential angst in miniscule amounts. Pay up and shut up.   My dearest Allen, there is always a question of how The cigarettes became besmirched with wax to complement What was once grass, and What was once a garish night drenching doorknobs. The night's yawn absorbs you as you lie down at the wrong angle To the sun ready already to let go of your hand As you stepped, quivering, on to The shores of Lethe.
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Dec 19, 2014
Dec 19, 2014 at 12:52 AM UTC
My Second Letter to Allen Ginsberg [revised]
My Second Letter to Allen Ginsberg Dear Allen, Almost five years ago, I wrote you a letter, and in That letter, I purged my drunkenly woeful cries That seem so first-world now and naïve – The things I grimed over with luxuries I didn’t Realize that rubbed against my plump limbs Like millions of felines poised at the Tombs of pharaohs. Oh, Allen, I’m so tired – These politics, and poly ticks, so many ticks that Annoy my tics. Allen! I smear your name so liberally Against this paper like primer because the easiest way To coerce someone into listening to you like A mother or predator tugging or nibbling on your ear – Swatches of velvet scalped from a pimp’s coat Are you and I talking to ourselves again? Candid insanity : Smoky hesitance. Dear Allen, I’m so tired – Yes, I love wearing my ovaries on the outside like Some Amazonian soapbox gem glistening from beneath The iron boots of what the newspapers tell me while I cough at them with the hurdled delicacies of alphabet soup. Give vegetables a gender and call them onions, Allen. Sullied scratch-hicks pinioned feet from slapping Society’s last rung on the ladder. Ignore the swerve of small-town eyes. Scapulas, stirrups, pap smears, and cervical mucus – now do you know who we are? That fingernail clipped too short, Allen. We’ve all got AIDs And AIDs babies, haven’t you heard? Hemorrhaging from the political ****** and out – they haven’t reached the heart.   Since when have old white men given a **** about some 13 year old’s birth control? I’m riding on the waves of the Parachute game and I swear this abortion-issue is just a veil outside Tuskegee University Being further shove over plaintive eyes, swollen and black. Pay up and shut up. I still remember my first broken ***** Allen. Can you tell me all about your first time? The vasodilatation that made veins rub against skin, Delirious brilliance : unfathomable electricity. I made love during an LSD experience, Allen, And I am not sorry. I see cosmic visions and Manifest universal vibrations as if this entire world is A dish reverberating with textiles and marbles, and All are plundering the depths of the finished wine Bottle roasting in the sink like Thanksgiving Turkey. The patience is in the living. Time opens out to you. The opening, between you and you, occupied, zoned for an encounter, given the histories of you and you— And always, who is this you? The start of you, each day, a presence already— Hey, you! Ah, Allen, if you are not safe, then I am not safe. And where is the safest place when that place Must be someplace other than in the body? Am I talking to myself again? You are not sick, you are injured— you ache for the rest of life. Why is it that I have to explain to my students that sometimes what I'm spouting is prescribed by a pedagogical pharmacy -- but all they want to know is "what do the symbols on the television mean?" I am completely aghast against the ghosts of future goners -- I am legitimately licensed to speak, write, listen like some mothers -- I am constantly cajoling the complex creations blamed on burned-out educators -- I am following the flagrant, fired-up **** YOU"s tagging lockers -- Pay up and shut up. Yes, and it’s Hopeless. Allen. Where did we get off leaping and bounding into The dogpile for chump change jurisdiction, policing The right and the left for inherent hypocrisies when Poets are so frightful to turn that introspective judgment Upon ourselves? We didn’t see it coming and I heard the flies, Allen. Mean crocodile tears. Flamingo mascara tracks Up and down : up and down: bow – bow – bow – bow Buoyant amongst the misguided ******** floating around In the swirlpool of lackadaisical introspection. What good is vague vocab within poetry? Absolutely none. Would you leave the porchlight on tonight? Absolutely, baby. Dear Allen, would you grow amongst the roots and dirt At the knuckles of a slackjawed brush of Ever-Pondering Questions Only to ask them time-and-time-and-time-and-time-again. Or pinch your forehead with burrowed, furrowed concentration upon those Feeble branches of progression towards something that recedes further And further with as much promise as the loving hand Attempts to guide a lover to the bed? Allen, I wish to see this world feelingly through the vibrations of billions of bodies, rocking and sobbing, plotting and gnashing like the movement of a million snakes, like the curves collecting and riding the parachute-veil. Ah, Allen! Say it ain’t so! Sanctified swerve town eyes. And everything is melting while poets take the weather Too personally And all the Holden Caulfields of the world read all the **** You’s written on the walls and all the Invisible Men Eat Yams and all the Zampanos are blind and blind And blind and blind and blind and blind Yet see as much as Gloucester, as much as Homer, As much as Oedipus. Oh, Allen, do you see this world feelingly and wander around the desert? Colored marbles vibrating on the curtailed parachute paradox. Lamentation of a small town’s onion. Little do we know, Allen, That what you cannot see, we cannot see, and we are bubbling Over in the animal soup of the proud yet weary. I can see, However, how the peeled back skulls of a million Workboots and paystubs may never sully the burden Of an existential angst in miniscule amounts. Pay up and shut up.   My dearest Allen, there is always a question of how The cigarettes became besmirched with wax to complement What was once grass, and What was once a garish night drenching doorknobs. The night's yawn absorbs you as you lie down at the wrong angle To the sun ready already to let go of your hand As you stepped, quivering, on to The shores of Lethe.
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kara-rose-trojan
Written by
kara-rose-trojan
American
Dec 19, 2014
Dec 19, 2014 at 12:52 AM UTC
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