For Thanksgiving week: "A Thanksgiving Prayer" (Burroughs)

"A Thanksgiving Prayer"
for John Dillinger in hope he is still alive
(William S. Burroughs)


Thanksgiving Day, November 28 1986.

Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeon 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 their carcasses 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 making 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 no one's allowed to mind his 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.