Sunday, November 23, 2008

I Wanna Give You the Turkeyneck

So, I need to get you in the mood a couple days early by explaining, that I like holidays about as much as I like getting woken up in the middle-of-the-night to avoid being burned up in flames. To me, they welcome falsity, mad rushes of insincere crowds and a waste of time, energy and resources.

They rob me of sleep, solitude and elbow room.
All in all, I'd rather we had more holidays that meant time for leisure and true celebration when everything would shut down, yes, even the bars and restaurants. When the streets are shut off to traffic and beings clamber along highways and avenues on the way to parks and forests and underground lairs or attic-space speakeasys, I will enjoy holidays in these "United" States of America.
Until that time, I'll continue to look at them in a similar light as my dear Uncle Bill.
...and I still love you, Mom.



William S. Burroughs
"The Thanksgiving Prayer"

Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen, feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind his own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the memories-- all right let's see your arms!

You always were a headache and you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

2 comments:

Peter said...

And thanks for the holiday sentiments. I'm with ya on that one!

Fred F said...

Wonderful; Burroughs can be humorous and humorless simultaneously.
Someone pointed out that "All Is For Naught" might be
(mis)construed to mean everything is for and about Zed Naught. I told him he was think way too literally.
- Fred Friction