Amos in Goshen

when they carried me down to this country
as a child, already the rites
were martial and harsh and the music was perverse

I sensed as only a child can sense that something
was rotten -- the lust for meat things
the thrill of acquisitiveness
the joy of beggaring your neighbor
orgasmic survival of the fittest

this terrifying fiendish swamp
whose creed was ultimate selfishness
whose blood was running money -- ah then
I discovered Ginsberg and it all made sense

how long ago? how long ago?
yet nothing has changed
drear mental concrete walls
big-mouth TV swallowing infants whole
brick ugly factory of Goshen High School

Kolymsky Heights of the mind
Siberia was hell and Stalin put me there
a phalanx of Nixons and fascist redneck principals

(some argue no equivalence of physical
and mental suffering, but how quantify?)

how quantify torture? I've been
in maximum security lockdown since 1960
they got my number coming over the border
when they carried me down, an innocent, a naif

the next year they blew up Cuba
they shot a Kennedy, then another and another
lathered naked Asian girls with jellied napalm
how to quantify terror?

they locked me up because I knew too much
here and there in shackles and restraints
here and there in screaming ugliness
chemical dungeons and junked Coney Islands of the mind

today I was rereading Howl, and Rexroth,
the whole boatload of sensitive useless old Beats
and it all made sense again, a cogent analysis
but times have changed and nothing has changed

dharma bums and queers and Quakers
immolated themselves at the Pentagon
I saw the monks flaming in the streets in Saigon
like the flower burning in the day

the moneychangers have set up
in the temple again -- no surprise
Moloch wants you for America's unending wars
flower children resist! but the Hoosiers beat you down

(Savio told us to throw ourselves on the wheel
but really! dude! how many times?)

how many times can the children jump in the river
break self on wheel of karma, dharma, what the hell
it stinks here, no joy in this cell, no solution here

and Goshen the genetic chemical restraint
bashes my head against its grey and stupefied walls
lacklove and vicious, cancer-production center of the world
DNA Mennonite straitjacket, inquisitors, they watch you
in the Anabaptist panopticon -- what will the neighbors think?

you tried to escape and you failed
brain police locked you up and brought you back
thorazine, haldol, mellaril, and the beat goes on
you killed yourself and they dragged you back from the dead
to be a zombie in Goshen, a useful cart horse for the bourgeoisie

but the light breaks, thrill codes blaze in the skylights
now Pegasus in yoke sprouts wings!
let's all fly away to the further shore and make love
for Babylon is fallen and America is damned


--Amos Stoltzfus