Beatiest of beats let me address you <br />as you America. Let me bless you <br />charleychaplin poet that you are <br />like Ferlinghetti spreadeagled in air <br />like Sandberg in Chicago like Burroughs AWOL <br />as you build up your argument to howl <br />at the barriers and choices in all existence <br />your words' steam engines go the distance <br />freshness and fury and spirit all churned <br />together till somehow they have learned <br />to answer back as good as you get. <br />No one has shouted down America yet <br />and made America listen and pause. <br />You move inexorably clause by clause <br />explain to America where to get off <br />with a smile and a laff and a wave and a cough <br />as you smell the world 's most exciting flower. <br />I'd rather think of you in Morden Tower. <br />I like to think of you reading there <br />with your beat poet friends in the city where <br />I was trying so hard for the ordinary life, <br />not to be a poet and not to write, <br />(and about the same time in London town <br />Denise Levertov wandered around) <br />what, not be a poet, what a waste of breath, <br />what a crime, what a sin, what a loss, what a death <br />and whatever my country its state or time, <br />Ginsberg you gave me permission to rhyme, <br />for politics, passion came down to this, <br />the word was the sword, just word with an s, <br />a reason to dance and a mandate to sing, <br />a line to scribble and a truth to bring, <br />to throw your mantle over everything<br /><br />Sally Evans<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/33-lines-for-ginsberg/
