Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: allen ginsberg, america, ☭☭☭, expat, headspace, nationalism?, possibility, western freedoms
[photo by Jacques Strappe]
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven 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.
[photo by samuel y]
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The poem is of course America by Allen Ginsberg. America is hard to articulate. America is also a little hard to celebrate. I’ve been here only two years and it is already a little bit too much for me. In that living elsewhere – especially a supercapitalist society like Dubai – gets you a slightly more diffused version of America. Coming and living here is like getting the punch-to-face Disneyland effect.
Soon I’ll need to decide if I want to stay here after school/ if I need to graduate early to get any kind of shot at the H1 work visa lottery. It is a little bit hard to want to stay here when this country does its level best to make non-citizens feel harried and unwelcome. This is not a critique of empire; perhaps I’ll save that particular set of diatribes for later. By this I mean the official bureaucratic side more than its people. but then again xenophobists are very avoidable, while the arm of the government isn’t. |
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 [photo by my still life] |
Perhaps it is that I don’t or can’t believe in the idea of America enough. America as it sees itself outside of social realities, replete with socioeconomic mobility and western freedoms.
Last night I met someone who works at a Bedford taco stand by day and makes short films in his spare time. He talked of Robert Rodriguez’ cinematic ascension and the possibility of making it out of nowhere. I’m sure it does happen I wish I could still believe in it, or idealism or maybe even the revolution any longer. eh. |
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