It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again.

— Allen Ginsberg

I would rather go mad, gone down the dark road to Mexico, heroin dripping in my veins, eyes and ears full of marijuana, eating the god Peyote on the floor of a mud hut on the border or laying in a hotel room over the body of some suffering man or woman; rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun; rather crawl on my naked belly over the tin cans of Cincinnati; rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies; rather, crowned with thorns in Galveston, nailed hand and foot in Los Angeles, raised up to die in Denver, pierced in the side in Chicago, perished and tombed in New Orleans and resurrected in 1958 somewhere on Garret Mountain, come down roaring in a blaze of hot cars and garbage, street corner Evan gel in front of City I-Tall, surrounded by statues of agonized lions, with a mouthful of shit, and the hair rising on my scalp, screaming and dancing in praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality, screaming and dancing against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world, blood streaming from my belly and shoulders flooding the city with its hideous ecstasy, rolling over the pavements and highways by the bayou and forests and derricks leaving my flesh and my bones hanging on the trees.

— Allen Ginsberg

Just because I like to suck cock doesn't make me any less American than Jesse Helms.

— Allen Ginsberg

Man is no form no mighty molecule no just idea alone — all that Thing — I feel man tender radiance at Heart between breast and belly, that physical place where the Self urges — delicate sensation

— Allen Ginsberg

. Moloch who entered my soul early. Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body. Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy. Moloch whom I abandon. Wake up in Moloch. Light streaming out of the sky. Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! Invisible suburbs! Skeleton treasuries! Blind capitals! Demonic industries! Spectral nations! Invincible madhouses! Granite cocks! Monstrous bombs! They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven. Pavements, trees, radios, tons. Lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us.

— Allen Ginsberg

No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love-be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love -cannot be bitter, cannot deny, cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy

— Allen Ginsberg

One must verge on the unknown, write toward the truth hitherto unrecognizable of one’s own sincerity, including the avoidable beauty of doom, shame, and embarrassment, that very area of personal self-recognition, (detailed individual is universal to remember) which formal conventions, internalized, keep us from discovering in ourselves and others

— Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

— Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

— Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

— Allen Ginsberg