Thanksgiving

Well, it’s become something of a tradition itself (an alternative dyspepsic tradition), and in the year of the Burroughs Centennial, we sure as heck weren’t going to miss out on this one – William S Burroughs lays down a wry litany of reasons-to-be-grateful, the United States of America celebrates its own shameful history of exploitation and consumption.  Happy Thanksgiving!

For John Dillinger

In hope he is still alive
Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1986

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, 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.