Allen Ginsberg Poems

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What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit- 
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees 
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. 
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, 
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of 
your enumerations! 
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam- 
ilies shopping at night! Aisles full...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 When I died, love, when I died
my heart was broken in your care;
I never suffered love so fair
as now I suffer and abide
when I died, love, when I died.

When I died, love, when I died
I wearied in an endless maze
that men have walked for centuries,
as endless as the gate was wide
when I died, love, when I died.

When I died,...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. 
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 
 17, 1956. 
I can't stand my own mind. 
America when will we end the human war? 
Go **** 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...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.

I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world go wild....Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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Take my love, it is not true,
So let it tempt no body new;
Take my lady, she will sigh
For my bed where'er I lie;
Take them, said the skeleton,

But leave my bones alone.


Take my raiment, now grown cold,
To give to some poor poet old;
Take the skin that hoods this truth
If his age would wear my youth;
Take them, said the skeleton,

But leave my...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 To Struga Festival Golden Wreath Laureates
 & International Bards 1986

Stand up against governments, against God.

Stay irresponsible.

Say only what we know & imagine.

Absolutes are coercion.

Change is absolute.

Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.

Observe what's vivid.

Notice what you notice.

Catch yourself thinking.

Vividness is self-selecting.

If we don't show anyone, we're free to write anything.

Remember the future.

Advise only yourself.

Don't drink yourself to death.

Two molecules clanking against...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 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
 silver panorama in natural eyeball--

Sacramento valley rivercourse's Chinese 
 dragonflames licking green flats north-hazed
 State Capitol metallic rubble, dry checkered fields
 to Sierras- past Reno, Pyramid Lake's 
...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 When I die
I don't care what happens to my body
throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River
bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But l want a big funeral
St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in 
 Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother 
 96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 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,
gave me a couch to sleep on,
conversed kindly, took me serious
asked my opinion on Mayakovsky
I...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 Drinking my tea
Without sugar-
 No difference.

The sparrow shits
 upside down
--ah! my brain & eggs

Mayan head in a
Pacific driftwood bole
--Someday I'll live in N.Y.

Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.

 Winter Haiku
I didn't know the names 
of the flowers--now
my garden is gone.

I slapped the mosquito
and missed.
What made me do that?

Reading haiku
I am unhappy,
longing for the Nameless.

A frog floating...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 Homage Kenneth Koch


If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
 scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
 the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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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...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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For Carl Solomon

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 I

In the depths of the Greyhound Terminal 
sitting dumbly on a baggage truck looking at the sky 
 waiting for the Los Angeles Express to depart 
worrying about eternity over the Post Office roof in 
 the night-time red downtown heaven 
staring through my eyeglasses I realized shuddering 
 these thoughts were not eternity, nor the poverty 
 of...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
 a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
 Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
 ous hand, named for Death's planet through the 
 sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of 
 Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to **** but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad

Millions of daughters walk...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look for the sunset over the box house hills and cry.

Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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 "Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative..."


I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days

Called up old Reichian analyst
who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
'It's happened' I panted 'There's a...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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Oil brown smog over Denver 
Oil red dung colored smoke 
level to level across the horizon 

blue tainted sky above 
Oil car smog gasoline 
hazing red Denver's day 

December bare trees 

sticking up from housetop streets 

Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over 

radar wheels, black smoke 

drifts from tailfins 

Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains 
Oil from Texas,...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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Blandly mother 
takes him strolling 
by railroad and by river 
-he's the son of the absconded 
hot rod angel- 
and he imagines cars 
and rides them in his dreams, 

so lonely growing up among 
the imaginary automobiles 
and dead souls of Tarrytown 

to create 
out of his own imagination 
the beauty of his wild 
forebears-a mythology 
he cannot inherit. 

Will...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen

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