Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Thanksgiving "prayer"

This is a very one-sided, jaded, ungrateful soliloquy... but Thanksgiving in this country traditionally is a very one-sided religio-patriotic holiday. A little over-compensation in the other direction just might restore some needed perspective.


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, lets 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.

William S. Burroughs

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A new thanksgiving prayer: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexis-c-jolly/a-new-thanksgiving-prayer_b_370140.html

Our Universe, which is everywhere:
Man, we are really, really small compared to you.
I hope we learn to stop killing each other and live in peace,
because that would be awesome.
We're so lucky to have this food, and each other, even though we've all acted like real jerks before--to strangers and, even more inexplicably, to each other.
But I hope we learn to act less crappy and instead learn to appreciate the gifts and the love that surround us, each and every day. Dig in.

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