Im delighted by the velocity of money as it whistles through the windows
of Lower East Side
Delighted by skyscrapers rising the old grungy apartments falling on
84th Street
Delighted by inflation that drives me out on the street
After all what goods the family farm, why eat turkey by thousands every
Thanksgiving?
Why not have Star Wars? Why have the same old America?!?
George Washington wasnt good enough! Tom Paine pain in the neck,
Whitman what a jerk!
Im delighted by double digit interest rates in the Capitalist world
I always was a communist, now well win
an usury makes the walls thinner, books thicker & dumber
Usury makes my poetry more valuable
my manuscripts worth their weight in useless gold -
Now everybodys atheist like me, nothings sacred
buy and sell your grandmother, eat up old age homes,
Peddle babies on the street, pretty boys for sale on Times Square -
You can shoot heroin, I can sniff cocaine,
macho men can fite on the Nicaraguan border and get paid with paper!
The velocitys what counts as the National Debt gets higher
Everybody running after the rising dollar
Crowds of joggers down broadway past City Hall on the way to the Fed
Nobody reads Dostoyevsky books so theyll have to give a passing ear
to my fragmented ravings in between Presidents speeches
Nothings happening but the collapse of the Economy
so I can go back to sleep till the landlord wins his eviction suit in court.
Velocity Of Money
written byAllen Ginsberg
© Allen Ginsberg