(I’d mentioned earlier that I had two posts planned for Thanksgiving. I didn’t get around to putting them up Thanksgiving day, so they go up today, instead.)
A Thanksgiving Prayer
by William S. Burroughs
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 on coyotes.
Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and to falsify until all the bare lies shine through.
Thanks for the KKK.
For nigger-killin’ lawmen feelin’ their notches.
For decent church goin’ 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.
Beat author William S. Burroughs has been one of my favorite authors for years now. I first heard this piece on one of his spoken word albums (Dead City Radio), and it has remained one of my favorite short pieces from WSB. As with much of WSB’s work, it really should not be read literally — some of my favorite aspects of his writing are his intelligence and an extremely wicked, biting sense of irony, sarcasm, and satire, all of which come through in this prayer.
For me, as someone who often treads the fine line between respect for the ideas and ideals that this country was founded on and dismay for the directions and actions that his country has taken throughout its history, this piece seems especially relevant at times like this, when political rhetoric is omnipresent and our current conflict with the Taliban and hunt for Osama bin Laden has blinded much of the public to the steady whittling away of the very freedoms that we take for granted as denizens of the United States of America (reference Bush’s ‘Patriot Act’ and the FBI Carnivore program, for instance). If nothing else, it should be worth some thought.