Quotes from Allen Ginsberg

I write poetry because I want to be alone and want to talk to people.

I don't want to suffer any more, I have had my mind broken open over and over before, I have been isolate and loveless always. I have not slept with anyone since I saw you, not because I was faithful but because I am afraid and I know no one. I will always be afraid I will always be worthless, I will always be alone till I die and I will be tormented long after you leave me.

You can own an elephant or a bank or power thereof but if there's no personal breast bliss all you own is a lot of dead atoms and ideas.

saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz

LSD Shakti-snake settles like Gas into Consciousness

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked... who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts...

Unless Chase Bank quits I prophesy blood violence

more diamonds and pearls of electricity

Empire State's orange shoulders lifted above the Hell

Hairy Mammal whaddya want

with my fucking suave manners and knowitall, eyes, and mind full of fantasy - the Me! that horror that keeps me conscious, in this Hell of Birth & Death

Electric Networks spread fear of murder on the streets

I'm with you in Rockland where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

enraptured in hypnotic war

Brainwash cried Romney, the Governor of Pollution

Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch! Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss! Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity! Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!

Banks burn, boys die bullet-eyed, mothers scream realization the vast tonnage of napalm

When Violence floods the State from above, flowery land razed for robot proliferation

Steak swallowers zonked on Television!

So he said, 'What would you like to do? What is your desire really?' I said, 'Doctor, I don't think you're going to find this very healthy and clear, but I really would like to stop working forever–never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I'm doing now–and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends.

Thus, as the Buddha said to a lady who offered him a curse,the gift is returned to the giver when it is not accepted

Now mind is clear as a cloudless sky. Time then to make a home in wilderness. What have I done but wander with my eyes in the trees? So I will build: wife, family, and seek for neighbors. Or I perish of lonesomeness or want of food or lightning or the bear (must tame the hart and wear the bear). And maybe make an image of my wandering, a little image—shrine by the roadside to signify to traveler that I live here in the wilderness awake and at home.

the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism