Thanksgiving

For John Dillinger, and hope that 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 be spoiled and poisoned.

Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving their carcasses 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 feelin' 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's allowed to mind his own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the memories . . . ("Alright, 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.



I will always cherish Burroughs, and will probably listen to his Thanksgiving prayer every year, but it does not really reflect the way I feel today.

Today, I am thankful for my health, to have made it through a half-century on this planet without breaking a bone, without a major illness, without a debilitating handicap.

I am thankful for my home, this nice house I live in, with its trees and leaves, with its location, with its comfort and warmth.

I am thankful for my job, for having a satisfying and challenging career, and for its compensation which provides me health insurance and affords me this home.

I am thankful for all the women who have ever been in my life. Sure, I bitch and moan about heartbreak and loss, but they have all provided me with love and affection when I needed it, and have rewarded and enriched me immeasurably.

And finally, I am thankful for the buddha-dharma, for the Three Treasures, for the Four Noble Truths and for the Eight-Fold Path, and for Zen, Japan's gift to the world.