A Vow
I will haunt these States
with beard bald head
eyes staring out plane window
hair hanging out in Greyhound bus midnight
leaning over taxicab seat to admonish
an angry cursing driver
hand lifted to calm
his outraged vehicle
that I pass with the Green Light of common law.
Common sense, Common law, common tenderness
and common tranquility
our means in America to control the money munching
war machine, bright lit industry
everywhere digesting forests & excreting soft pyramids
of newsprint, Redwood and Ponderosa patriarchs
silent in Meditation murdered & regurgitated as smoke,
sawdust, screaming ceilings of Soap Opera,
thick dead Lifes, slick Advertisements
for Gubernatorial big guns
burping Napalm on palm rice tropic greenery.
Dynamite in forests,
boughs fly slow motion
thunder down ravine,
Helicopters roar over National Park, Mekong swamp,
Dynamite fire blasts thru Model Villages,
Violence screams at Police, Mayors get mad over radio,
Drop the Bomb on Niggers!
drop Fire on the gook China
Frankenstein Dragon
waving its tail over Bayonne's domed Aluminium oil reservoir!
I'll haunt these states all year
gazing bleakly out train windows, blue airfield
red TV network on evening plains,
decoding radar Provincial editorial paper message,
deciphering Iron Pipe laborer's curses as
clanging hammers they raise steamshovel claws
over Puerto Rican agony lawyers screams in slums.
Commentary
Watching the images from Iraq on CNN this is the poem I keep coming back to - not because it’s my favourite war poem, but because it expresses better than anything else this frustrated sense of rage I feel for the arrogance of America. I love it because it brings out so beautifully the contradiction, the hypocrisy at the heart of the American way - the freedom it arrogates to itself and then, drunk on its power, denies to others; the deliberate placidity of a world where an angry taxi driver is the most dangerous thing you have to worry about while the rest of the world burns to ashes to feed your industries.
Ghost of Ginsberg, it’s time.
— Aseem Kaul