Hiway Poesy Painted Desert to Albuquerque-The Handsome Family/Allen Ginsberg

from Hiway Poesy L.A. to Wichita "PAINTED DESERT, petrified forest Leslie Howard's scratchy '30s image eating jurassic steak Petroglyphs over there the Man in the Moon, the guy with four fingers over there, this is the sun, with two spikes out the North, two spikes South, two spikes ray East & West Milky way over here, the Moon, and all the animal tentacles Nebula spiraled " Roger 1943" And I hit Julius for eating his avocado cheese sandwich too fast. Gas flares, oil refinery night smoke, high aluminum tubes winking red lights over space ship runways petrochemical witches' blood boiling underground— "Looks like they're getten ready to go to Mars." Approaching Thoreau— Fort Wingate Army Depot entrance— and there's the Continental Divide. Anti Vietnam War Demonstrator soldiers sentenced For Contempt of President: Hard Labor— Learn thyself in Shell Refinery's Oil Storage Seaboard Rackets, Lying back on the car seat, eyelids heavy, legs spread leaned against the table, Oh that I were young again and the skin in my anus folds rose, "La illaba el (lill) Allah bu" Finally bored, Over a hill, singing Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram Albuquerque Sparkling blue brilliant more diamonds & pearls of electricity running out of power-plants than ever heard of Turkey or Israel— intense endless iridescence on black velvet desert— Ah what a marvel orange blue Neon Circling itself Solar System'd Speed Wash Texaco 19¢ Famous Hamburgers Lion House Italian Village Pizza ah! radio warbles Electronic noise echo chamber vibrations— Albuquerque streets' fantastic Neon Stars collapsing to bright red blinks Satellite Globes plunging their tiny lamps in and out— the eyeball. * * * * Space stretching North dotted with silver gastanks to Sandia Range Hitchhiking student supported by National Defense Fund with his black horn rimmed glasses, thin blond hair, "If your country calls you, would you go?" "If my country drafted me then I would go." Selfish young american always interested in his own skin —and blue car speeding along the highway sticker on back "I'm proud I'm an American" right front seat, a 10 gallon hat driver a fat car salesman— Sitting icy tipped distant earth peaks over Hilltops & here's an ugly little oasis, used car tractors fenced off by barbed wire below roadside— Evenings cool clear, sharp brilliant blue stars— Just what we needed, State Penitentiary! Two miles off into the brown furze rolling East of the highway "This is Ford Country what are you driving?" Be a Ford dealer? Great snow meadows roof Sangre De Cristo clouds, North, dipping misty rivulet tails of pointy fog. It's a hard question which would you rescue, your mother-in-law or the last text of Shakespeare?" January 28- 29, 1966 Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers