Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CAR CRASH, by ALLEN GINSBERG


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CAR CRASH, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Snow-blizzard sowing
Subject(s): United States; America


Snow-blizzard sowing
ice-powder drifts on stone fenced
gardens near gray woods.
Yellow hump-backed snow plow
rocking giant tires round
the road, red light flashing
iron insect brain.
Mrow, the cat with diarrhea.
Sunlight settled into human form,
tree rings settled age after age
stone forests accumulating atoms
traveled 93,000,000 miles,
carbon deposits settled into beds,
the mountain's head breathes light,
Earth-hairs gather gold beams
thru chlorophyll, poets walk
between the green bushes
sprouting solar language.
Broken bones in bed,
hips and ribs cracked by autos,
snowdrifts over rubber tires,
tree stump
s freeze, the body stump
heals temporarily in wintertime.

II
So that's it the body, ah!
Beat yr meat in a dark bed.
Boy friends wrinkle & shit in snow.
Girls go fat-eyed to their mother's coffin.
Cigarettes burned my tastebuds' youth,
I smelled my lover's behind,
This autocrash broke my hip and ribs,
Ugh, Thud, nausea-breath at solar plexus paralyzed my bowels four days-
Eyeglasses broke, eyeballs still intact-
Thank God! alas, still alive but talk words
died in my body, thoughts died in pain.
A healthy day in the snow, white breath
and warm wool sox, hat over ears, hot broth,
nakedness in warm boudoirs, stiff prick come,
fame, physic, learning, scepter, dusk
and Aurora Borealis, hot pig flesh, turkey
stuffing-all disappear in a broken skull.
Unstable element, Sight Sound flesh Touch
& Taste, all Odour, one more consciousness
backseat of a steaming auto with broken nose-
Unstable place to be, an easy way out
by metal crash instead of mind cancer.
Unreliable meat, waving a chicken bone
in a hospital bed-get what's coming to you
like the chicken steak you ate last year.
Impossible Dr. Feelgood Forever, gotta die
made of worm-stuff And worm thoughts?
And who's left watching, or even
remembers the car crash that severed
the skull from the spinal column?
Who gets out of body, or who's shut in
a box of soft pain when Napalm drops
from Heaven all over the abdomen,
breasts and cheek-skin? & tongue cut out
by inhuman knives? Cow tongue? Man tongue?
What does it feel like not to talk?
To die in the back seat, Ow!

III

Raw pine walls, ice-white windows
three weeks now, snowy flatness
foot-thick down valley meadows,
wind roar in bare ash arms, oak branch
tendrils icy gleaming, yellow stain of morning water in front
door's snow-I walk out on crutches
to see white moonglow make snow blue
-three men just rode a space ship
round the moon last week-gnashing
their teeth in Biafra & Palestine,
Assassins & Astronauts traveling from
Athens to the sea of Venus Creatrix-
Lovers' quarrels magnified decades to mad
violence, half naked farm boys stand
with axes at the kitchen table,
trembling guilty, slicing egg
grapefruit breasts on breakfast oilcloth.
Growing old, growing old, forget the words,
mind jumps to the grave, forget words,
Love's an old word, forget words,
Peter with shave-head beardface
mutters & screams to himself at midnight.
A new year, no party tonite, forget
old loves, old words, old feelings.
Snow everywhere around the house,
I turned off the gas-light & came upstairs
alone to read, remembering pictures of dead
moon-side, my hip broken, the cat sick,
earhead filled with my own strong music,
in a houseful of men, sleep in underwear.
Neal almost a year turned to ash, angel
in his own midnight without a phonecall,
Jack drunk in my mind or his Florida.
Forget old friends, old words, old loves,
old bodies. Bhaktivedanta advises Christ.
The body lies in bed in '69 alone,
a gnostic book fills the lap, Aeons
revolve 'round the household, Rimbaud
age 16 adolescent sneers tight lipt
green-eyed oval in old time gravure
-1869 his velvet tie askew, hair
mussed & ruffled by policeman's rape.





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