For John Dillinger and hope he is still alive
Thanksgiving Day, November Twenty-eighth, 1986
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-killing lawmen feeling their notches
For decent church-going 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 their 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
William Burroughs
1914 - 1997