Thoughts on a Breath
From the Archives
By Allen Ginsberg
Cars slide minute down asphalt lanes in front of
Dallas Hilton Inn
or roll up toward the city’s squared towers under
electric-wire trestles gridded cross
countried trees brown bare in December’s
smog-mist towards the water tower
distanced under cloud streak crossed with fading
vapor trails.
Majestic rolling in a skirt of human fog, building blocks
rise at sky edge
Confronting the march of branches and house roofs to horizon.
I sat again to complete the cycle, eyes open seeing
dust motes in the eye screen
like birds over telephone wires, curve of the eyeball
where Dallas and I meet—
the white motel wall of the senses—roar in the ear
of oil exhaust, snuffle and bone growl
of motors rolling North Central freeway
Energy playing over the Concrete, energy singing
and hymning itself in emptiness—
What’ve I learned since I sat here four years ago
this season?—
In the halls of the head or out thru the halls of the
senses, same space
Trucks rolling toward Dallas skyscrapers
or mind thoughts floating thru my head
vanish on a breath—What Was it I began
my meditation on?
Police state, Students, Poetry open tongue, and the
anger and Fear of the Cops,
the oil Cops, the Rockefeller Cops, the Oswald Cops,
the Johnson Cops the Nixon Cops
the president Cops
The SMU Cops the Trustee Cops the CIA Cops
FBI Cops Goon Squads of Dope
the Cops that busted Stoney Burns and sent him to
Jail for 10 years and a day
for less than a joint of Grass, a Citizen
under republic, under Constitution, of Texas?
We sit here in police state and sigh, knowing
we’re trapped in our bodies,
our fear of No meat, no oil, no money, no airplanes
no sex no love no kisses no jobs no
work
Nothing but massive metal bars about, monster machines
that eat us, Controlled by the army the
Cops, the Secret police, our own thoughts!
Punishment! Punish me! Punish me! we scream
in our hearts, cocks spurting alone
in our fists!
What thoughts more flowed thru our hearts alone in Dallas?
Flowed thru our hearts like oil thru Hilton’s
faucets?
Where shall we house our minds, how pay the rent for our
Selves, how to protect our bodies
from inflation, starvation, old age, smoking Cancer,
Coughing to Death?
Where can we get the money to buy off the skeleton? If we
work with Kissinger
Can we buy time, get off on parole? Does Rockefeller
want the Underground
Newspapers printing his subconscious mind’s
oil wars?
Will 92’nd Armored Division be sent to seize
the oilfields of Arabia
as threatened in this December’s U S News &
World Report?
What’d we remember that destroyed these armies
with a breath?
How can we pay rent & stay in our bodies
if we don’t sell our minds to Samsara?
If we don’t join the illusion—that Gas is life—
How can we in Dallas SMU
look forward to our Futures? Will we have to work
with our hands
like slaves growing Crops in the field, & plough and
harvest our own corny fate?
Oh Walt Whitman salutations you knew the laborer,
the sexual intelligent horny handed
man who lived in Dirt
and fixed the axles of Capitalism, dumbed and
laughing at hallucinating Secretaries of State!
Oh intellect of body back & Cock whose red neck
supports the S & M freaks of Government
police & Fascist Monopolies—
Kissinger bare assed & big buttocked
with a whip, in leather boots
scrawling on a memo to Chile “No more
civics lesson please”
When the ambassador complained about Torture
methods used in Santiago Detention Stadium!
And I ride the planes that Rockefeller Gassed
when he paid off Kissinger!
Stoney Burns sits in jail, in a stone cell in
Huntsville
and breathes his news to solitude.
Homage
to the Gurus, Guru Om! Thanks to the teachers
who taught us to breathe,
to watch our minds revolve in emptiness, to follow
the rise & fall of thoughts,
Illusions as big as empires flowering &
Vanishing on a breath!
Thanks to the aged teachers whose wrinkles
read our minds’ newspapers &
taught us not to Cling to yesterday thoughts,
or the thoughts of a split second ago, but
let our cities vanish on a breath—
Thanks to the teachers who showed us to behold
Dust motes in our own eye,
anger in our own hearts,
and the emptiness of the Dallases where we
sit thinking knitted brows—
Sentient beings are numberless I vow
to liberate all
Passions are unfathomable I vow to
release them all
Thought forms are limitless I vow to
master all
Awakened space is endless I vow to
live to the limit.
December 4, 1974
Dallas
“Thoughts on a Breath,” by Allen Ginsberg, Vol. 60, No. 1, Winter 1975.
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