I’m delighted by the velocity of money as it whistles through the windows
of Lower East Side
Delighted by skyscrapers rising the old grungy apartments falling on
84th Street
Delighted by inflation that drives me out on the street
After all what good’s the family farm, why eat turkey by thousands every
Thanksgiving?
Why not have Star Wars? Why have the same old America?!?
George Washington wasn’t good enough! Tom Paine pain in the neck,
Whitman what a jerk!
I’m delighted by double digit interest rates in the Capitalist world
I always was a communist, now we’ll win
an usury makes the walls thinner, books thicker & dumber
Usury makes my poetry more valuable
my manuscripts worth their weight in useless gold -
Now everybody’s atheist like me, nothing’s sacred
buy and sell your grandmother, eat up old age homes,
Peddle babies on the street, pretty boys for sale on Times Square -
You can shoot heroin, I can sniff cocaine,
macho men can fite on the Nicaraguan border and get paid with paper!
The velocity’s what counts as the National Debt gets higher
Everybody running after the rising dollar
Crowds of joggers down broadway past City Hall on the way to the Fed
Nobody reads Dostoyevsky books so they’ll have to give a passing ear
to my fragmented ravings in between President’s speeches
Nothing’s happening but the collapse of the Economy
so I can go back to sleep till the landlord wins his eviction suit in court.
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Comments
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Same book
From guest zac (contact)
I have the same book as David and I noticed too that the versions of the poem are different and every one of this poem I can find online is the same version that is printed here. -
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It is not unusual for different editions of a poet's work, printed in his/her lifetime, to contain differences as many poets "improve" their work over time.
I will endeavour to locate a hardcopy version of this poem so that it can be acredited to a specific publication.
Jim
Oldpoetry Team Leader
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Why Did He Write This Poem for Lee Berton
From guest David (contact)
Why did Mr. Ginsberg write this poem for Lee Berton and why did he date the poem February 18, 1986, 10:00 a.m. Then he revised and added lines to it later on. I got my information from Page 1248, in The Norton Introduction to Literature: Ninth Edition. If anyone can help me with a work cited page and more info. please E-mail me: Crawforddavid@att.net
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