The Counterculture and Disillusionment of Gregory Corso: His Poetry
An Excerpt from “The American Way”
It is a time in which ignorance is a good Ameri-cun ignorance is excused only where it is so it is not so in America Man is not guilty Christ is not to be feared I am telling you the American Way is a hideous monster eating Christ making Him into Oreos and Dr. Pepper the sacrament of its foul mouth I am telling you the devil is impersonating Christ in America America’s educators & preachers are the mental-dictators of false intelligence they will not allow America to be smart they will only allow death to make America smart Educators & communicators are the lackeys of the American Way They enslave the minds of the young and the young are willing slaves (but not for long) because who is to doubt the American Way is not the way? The duty of these educators is no different than the duty of a factory foreman Replica production make all the young think alike dress alike believe alike do alike Togetherness this is the American Way The few great educators in America are weak & helpless They abide and so uphold the American Way Wars have seen such men they who despised things about them but did nothing and they are the most dangerous Dangerous because their intelligence is not denied and so give faith to the young who rightfully believe in their intelligence “Notes after Blacking Out”
Lady of the legless world I have refused to go beyond self-disappearance I'm in the thin man's bed knowing my legs kept to me by a cold fresh air Useless and not useless this meaning All is answerable I need not know the answer Poetry is seeking the answer Joy is in knowing there is an answer Death is knowing the answer (That faint glow in the belly of Enlightenment is the dead spouting their answers) Queen of cripples the young no longer seem necessary. The old are secretive about their Know They are constant additions to this big unauthorized lie Yet Truth's author itself is nothingness And though I make it vital that nothingness itself will collapse There is nothing Nothing ever was Nothing is a house never bought Nothing comes after this wildbright Joke Nothing sits on nothing in a nothing of many nothings a nothing king. Me Reading "Notes after Blacking Out"
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Gregory Corso Reading Some of His Other Poems
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An Excerpt from “BOMB”
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM ye skies and BOOM ye suns BOOM BOOM ye moons ye stars BOOM nights ye BOOM ye days ye BOOM BOOM BOOM ye winds ye clouds ye rains Go BANG ye lakes ye oceans BING Barracuda BOOM and cougar BOOM Ubangi BOOM orangutang BING BANG BONG BOOM bee bear baboon ye BANG ye BONG ye BING the tail the fin the wing Yes Yes into our midst a bomb will fall Flowers will leap in joy their roots aching Fields will kneel proud beneath the halleluyahs of the wind Pinkbombs will blossom Elkbombs will perk their ears Ah many a bomb that day will awe the bird a gentle look Yet not enough to say a bomb will fall or even contend celestial fire goes out Know that the earth will madonna the Bomb that in the hearts of men to come more bombs will be born magisterial bombs wrapped in ermine all beautiful and they'll sit plunk on earth's grumpy empires fierce with moustaches of gold Gregory Corso Reading "BOMB"
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