Poems by Allen Ginsberg

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I Am a Victim of Telephone

When I lie down to sleep dream the Wishing Well it rings

"Have you a new play for the broken down theater?"

When I write in my notebook poem it rings

"Buster Keaton is under the Brooklyn bridge on Frankfurt and Pearl..."

When I unsheathe my skin extend my cock toward someone's thighs fat or

thin, boy or girt

Tingaling-"Please get him out of jail... the police are crashing down"

When I lift the soupspoon to my lips, the phone on the floor begins

Allen Ginsberg

Wales Visitation

White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow

Trees moving in rivers of wind

The clouds arise

as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist

above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed

along a green crag

glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—

Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught

Allen Ginsberg

Paterson

What do I want in these rooms papered with visions of money?

How much can I make by cutting my hair? If I put new heels on my shoes,

bathe my body reeking of masturbation and sweat, layer upon layer of excrement

dried in employment bureaus, magazine hallways, statistical cubicles, factory stairways,

cloakrooms of the smiling gods of psychiatry;

if in antechambers I face the presumption of department store supervisory employees,

old clerks in their asylums of fat, the slobs and dumbbells of the ego with money and power

to hire and fire and make and break and fart and justify their reality of wrath and rumor of wrath to wrath-weary man,

Allen Ginsberg

Ballad Of The Skeletons

Said the Presidential Skeleton

I won't sign the bill

Said the Speaker skeleton

Yes you will

Said the Representative Skeleton

I object

Said the Supreme Court skeleton

Whaddya expect

Allen Ginsberg

To Aunt Rose

Aunt Rose—now—might I see you

with your thin face and buck tooth smile and pain

of rheumatism—and a long black heavy shoe

for your bony left leg

limping down the long hall in Newark on the running carpet

past the black grand piano

in the day room

where the parties were

Allen Ginsberg

Mugging (I)

Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth street’s dusk—

Walked out of my home ten years, walked out in my honking neighborhood

Tonite at seven walked out past garbage cans chained to concrete anchors

Walked under black painted fire escapes, giant castiron plate covering a hole in ground

—Crossed the street, traffic lite red, thirteen bus roaring by liquor store,

past corner pharmacy iron grated, past Coca Cola & Mylai posters fading scraped on brick

Past Chinese Laundry wood door’d, & broken cement stoop steps For Rent hall painted green & purple Puerto Rican style

Allen Ginsberg

My Sad Self

To Frank O’Hara

Sometimes when my eyes are red

I go up on top of the RCA Building

and gaze at my world, Manhattan—

my buildings, streets I’ve done feats in,

lofts, beds, coldwater flats

—on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind,

its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men

Allen Ginsberg

Cezanne's Ports

In the foreground we see time and life

swept in a race

toward the left hand side of the picture

where shore meets shore.

But that meeting place

isn't represented;

it doesn't occur on the canvas.

For the other side of the bay

Allen Ginsberg

Feb 29, 1958

Last nite I dreamed of T.S. Eliot

welcoming me to the land of dream

Sofas couches fog in England

Tea in his digs Chelsea rainbows

curtains on his windows, fog seeping in

the chimney but a nice warm house

and an incredibly sweet hooknosed

Eliot he loved me, put me up,

Allen Ginsberg

Hospital Window

At gauzy dusk, thin haze like cigarette smoke

ribbons past Chrysler Building's silver fins

tapering delicately needletopped, Empire State's

taller antenna filmed milky lit amid blocks

black and white apartmenting veil'd sky over Manhattan,

offices new built dark glassed in blueish heaven—The East

50's & 60's covered with castles & watertowers, seven storied

tar-topped house-banks over York Avenue, late may-green trees

Allen Ginsberg

On The Conduct Of The World Seeking Beauty Against Government

Is that the only way we can become like Indians, like Rhinoceri,

like Quartz Crystals, like organic farmers, like what we imagine

Adam & Eve to’ve been, caressing each other with trembling limbs

before the Snake of Revolutionary Sex wrapped itself round

The Tree of Knowledge? What would Roque Dalton joke about lately

teeth chattering like a machine gun as he dabated mass tactics

with his Companeros? Necessary to kill the Yanquis with big bomb

Yes but don’t do it by yourself, better consult your mother

Allen Ginsberg

Crossing Nation

Under silver wing

San Francisco's towers sprouting

thru thin gas clouds,

Tamalpais black-breasted above Pacific azure

Berkeley hills pine-covered below—

Dr Leary in his brown house scribing Independence

Declaration

typewriter at window

Allen Ginsberg