Allen Ginsberg the crazy beatnick hippie homosexual poet is one of the most badass humans ever to live. When he lived in Berkeley in the 50s and 60s he frolicked and maybe made love to little boys but he certainly loved life and found beauty in the small things. Passionate, real, honest, humorous, invigorating, revolutionary, brilliant, but not pretentious: this is why his writing has struck a chord with so many people. Its funny that being a Ginsberg fan I found a connection to him by working in a supermarket in California, the very subject of one of his most famous pieces.
Here are some lines from A Supermarket in California, which he wrote in 1955 in Berkeley, CA:
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the streets 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 families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
No comments:
Post a Comment