'Death on All Fronts' Anthology

from Big Bridge & Halvard Johnson of the NewPoetry list:

“Friends and neighbors--
“For a mini-anthology of poems inspired by/responding to/related to Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘Death on All Fronts’ and/or the various wars/insurgencies/etc. going on in the world today, please send 1-6 poems to me at halvard@earthlink.net with the words ‘Big Bridge’ followed by your own name in the subject line. Unidentified submissions may be lost or discarded--advertently or inadvertently. The poems submitted may be either previously published or unpublished and brand-new. We cannot, though, seek or pay for reprint permissions from publishers. This mini-anthology (approximately 30 poems) will appear in the January issue of Big Bridge, and submissions of work will be accepted until the end of November.”

DEATH ON ALL FRONTS

“The Planet is Finished”
A new moon looks down on our sick sweet planet
Orion’s chased the Immovable Bear halfway across the sky
from winter to winter. I wake, earlier in bed, fly corpses
cover gas lit sheets, my head aches, left temple
brain fibre throbbing for Death I created on all Fronts.
Poisoned rats in the Chickenhouse and myriad lice
Sprayed with white arsenics filtering to the brook, City Cockroaches
stomped on Country kitchen floors. No babies for me.
Cut earth boy & girl hordes by half & breathe free
say Revolutionary expert Computers:
Half the blue globe’s germ population’s more than enough
keep the cloudy lung from stinking pneumonia.
I called in the Exterminator Who soaked the Wall floor
with bed-bug death-oil. Who’ll soak my brain with death-oil?
I wake before dawn dreading my wooden possessions,
my gnostic books, my loud mouth, old loves silent, charms
turned to image money, my body sexless fat, Father dying,
Earth Cities poisoned at war, my art hopeless --
Mind fragmented--and still abstract--Pain in
left temple living death


-- Sept. 26, 1969

--Allen Ginsberg
(from The Fall of America: poems of these states, 1965-1971,
[San Francisco: City Lights, 1972])