thanks

[Kali]

Thanksgiving Day, Nov 28,1986 first appeared in the chapbook Tornado Alley, with illustrations by S. Clay Wilson. Gus Van Sant then made a short film of Burroughs reading the text.

This poem resonates today as exposing what has gone horribly wrong in the USA, or maybe what has always been wrong.

Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986



William S. Burroughs

For John Dillinger

In hope he is still alive

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 carcass to rot

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes

thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and 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 is allowed to mind his own business

thanks for a nation of finks — yes,

thanks for all the memories all right, lets 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.

[happybird]

1. And thanks for the reminder

I send this to my libertarian friend every year and it slipped my mind today.
Sent. Eye rolls and outrage incoming.