My Thanksgiving Prayer 2007
Posted: November 21st, 2007, 1:59 pm
inspired by William S Burroughs
Let us give thanks for food and for grocery stores
whose shipping and receiving activities
for one day
could feed nobody
after it spoils
Thank you for all the big race wars
so an American house can have a home
on a street with a name inspired by physical and spiritual slaughter:
Cherokee Lane, Missionary Road, Apache Creek Road
and Martin Luther King Boulevard
God bless the war profiteers and
the culture pirates who slam shut their found treasures — coins of the minds now shackled and burned
Give thanks to the landowners who rip off the keepers of their homes
for without keeping the security deposit, housing prices would fall
Thank you for Wall Street and traders and skinners of fur
and diamond assessors, without whom our slaves would be devalued
and our caverns of rock empty save the echoes of the truly lost generations
Thank you, America, for big guns that ride on the backs of big ships,
for big men in stiff shirts murdering in your name
God bless small flags of pins and pockets — encouraging the convenience of patriotism
God bless prisoners with tattooed tears, soldiers with helmet tally counts — God bless America for making sure we know the difference
Give thanks to the gluttony and the greed and the pride
which keeps us feeling safe and sincere without further sacrifice
Give thanks to credit cards and easy passes and instant transactions
which guarantee our quivering travel across this great land laid bare with cemeteries of dissolved skin and bone and museums of un-history
God bless the great war machine, and God bless God, and God bless the blind and the deaf and the stupid and numb,
the panicked and dumb, the millions of cavernous souls reciting at dinnertime the oaths to those who survived to write the books
through killing and madness, fear and imperialism and by the strong hand of God and money.
Let us give thanks, so that we may ignore
The gifts billions have never seen before
The billions we've slaughtered and still
Put them in movies to watch once we're filled
With the spoils of our conquest
From far east to the road west
From sea to bloody sea
From you to only me
Let us give thanks for food and for grocery stores
whose shipping and receiving activities
for one day
could feed nobody
after it spoils
Thank you for all the big race wars
so an American house can have a home
on a street with a name inspired by physical and spiritual slaughter:
Cherokee Lane, Missionary Road, Apache Creek Road
and Martin Luther King Boulevard
God bless the war profiteers and
the culture pirates who slam shut their found treasures — coins of the minds now shackled and burned
Give thanks to the landowners who rip off the keepers of their homes
for without keeping the security deposit, housing prices would fall
Thank you for Wall Street and traders and skinners of fur
and diamond assessors, without whom our slaves would be devalued
and our caverns of rock empty save the echoes of the truly lost generations
Thank you, America, for big guns that ride on the backs of big ships,
for big men in stiff shirts murdering in your name
God bless small flags of pins and pockets — encouraging the convenience of patriotism
God bless prisoners with tattooed tears, soldiers with helmet tally counts — God bless America for making sure we know the difference
Give thanks to the gluttony and the greed and the pride
which keeps us feeling safe and sincere without further sacrifice
Give thanks to credit cards and easy passes and instant transactions
which guarantee our quivering travel across this great land laid bare with cemeteries of dissolved skin and bone and museums of un-history
God bless the great war machine, and God bless God, and God bless the blind and the deaf and the stupid and numb,
the panicked and dumb, the millions of cavernous souls reciting at dinnertime the oaths to those who survived to write the books
through killing and madness, fear and imperialism and by the strong hand of God and money.
Let us give thanks, so that we may ignore
The gifts billions have never seen before
The billions we've slaughtered and still
Put them in movies to watch once we're filled
With the spoils of our conquest
From far east to the road west
From sea to bloody sea
From you to only me