[New-Poetry] Happy Birthday Ginsberg

[Anny Ballardini]

A poem that reveals a new style of David Graham, I like it.

I remember when Ginsberg died I met this frail intellectual, only son of a good family, who teaches Italian and writes for newspapers and spoke of all the prime ministers of Italy as if they were his uncles, and one even was or had adopted him as his nephew. And it surprised me that he should talk of G. in that way and I thought I saw that he was carrying a little lit bag, like an upside down light bulb under his left wrist, and as soon as he finished, he hid it back again inside.


  From: TheOldMole 

  Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 9:17 PM



  Nice.
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: David Graham 
    To: NewPoetry & Views 
    Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 2:49 PM
    Subject: [New-Poetry] Happy Birthday Ginsberg


    Ginsberg born this day in 1926.  Here's the poem I wrote after he died: 


    Goodbye Allen Ginsberg

    Old truth-goof, garrulous
    and canny crow, finally
    you're at one with polluted skies,
    sidewalk grit, neon buzzing
    messages to the Absolute,
    all those clippings of your face
    candidly sweet, decently weary,
    all your archives and footnotes
    and tapes full of scat. . . .
    What use the FBI, CIA 
    keeping tabs on your slant self?
    What did they ever learn
    you hadn't already published?
    You printed come cries, vanities
    and regrets, droopy-fleshed lust
    and despair hard as a curb.
    Farts of savvy delirium.
    Chanting your wet dreams
    as if they would dissolve
    the Pentagon, you bombed 
    the White House with squads
    of paper airplanes, scribbled
    all over with holy jokes
    --to no avail, no avail,
    you big phony failure,
    you stand up comic singing off key
    in eternity's lounge, raking in
    prizes like Miss America, sprawling
    all over the anthologies at last.
    Yes, you were queer, start to finish
    in every way, jabbering stowaway
    on the flound'ring ship of State,
    crazy angel of the honorarium,
    philosopher goat.
    Goodbye to your smoldering ashes,
    goodbye to pages of yellow gibberish
    and their sudden shafts of pure sun
    warming the forest floor . . . .





    ==========================================

    David Graham

    grahamd at ripon.edu

    Home Page:

    http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html

    Poetry Library:

    http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html

    ==========================================








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