Cut My Thoughts

My final major project while studying for my Illustration (BA) degree was based on the poems of Allen Ginsberg. I produced a book featuring a selection of 8 of his poems each with their own illustrations that intepreted ideas presented in the poems. I personally enjoy the sometimes literal interpretations of metaphors in the poetry and how, these interpretations create bizarre surreal images which I felt were suited to the hedonistic times in which the poems were created.

Allen Ginsberg was an American poet. He is best known for the poem 'Howl' (1956), celebrating his friends who were members of the 'Beat Generation' and attacking what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States. Ginsberg fought against censorship in literature which he suffered from as a controversial writer. He was an early proponent of freedom for men who loved other men, having already in 1943 discovered within himself "mountains of homosexuality." He expressed this desire openly and graphically in his poetry. Ginsberg also talked often about drug use. Throughout the 1960s he took an active role in the demystification of LSD and with Timothy Leary worked to promote its common use. He was also for many decades an advocate of Marijuana legalization. These ideas were also common in his poetry and I have tried to incorporate most of these themes and ideas into my illustrations.

My final images were produced as A2 screenprints, I decided I wanted them to be quite raw in their execution in relation to the way the 'Beats' would write. Following this idea I produced each image as an edition of only 2 prints per image. This meant my final images often had badly registered layers and patchy areas of print. It also gave them a slightly aged and worn look which I think works well with the age of the poems and themes.

Pull My Daisy*

Pull My Daisy
tip my cup
all my doors are open
Cut my Thoughts
for coconuts
all my eggs are broken
Jack my Arden
Gate my shades
woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden
rose my days
now my prayers awaken

Bone my shadow
dove my dream
start my halo bleeding
Milk my mind &
make me cream
drink me when you're ready
Hop my heart on
harp my height
seraphs hold me steady
Hip my angel
hype my light
lay it on the needy

Heal the raindrop
sow the eye
bust my dust again
Woe the worm
work the wise
dig my spade the same
Stop the hoax
what's the hex
where's the wake
how's the hicks
take my golden beam

Rob my locker
lick my rocks
leap my cock in school
Rack my lacks
lark my looks
jump right up my hole
Whore my door
beat my boor
eat my snake of fool
Craze my hair
bare my poor
asshole shorn of wool

Say my oops
ope my shell
bite my naked nut
Roll my bones
ring my bell
call my worm to sup
Pope my parts
pop my pot
raise my daisy up
Poke my pap
pit my plum
let my gap be shut

Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac & Neal Cassidy
New York, Spring-Fall 1949

*Pull my Daisy has been published in many different forms and stages of development and completion. It was written by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady in the late forties in a similar way to a Surrealist “exquisite corpse” game, one person writing the first line, the other writing the second, and so on sequentially with each person only being shown the line before.

First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels

Cool black night thru redwoods
Cars parked outside in shade
Behind the gate, stars dim above
The ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
Gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.

December 1965

Kiss Ass

Kissass is the part of peace
America will have to Kissass Mother Earth
Whites have to Kissass Blacks, for Peace & Pleasure,
Only Pathway to peace, Kissass

Houston, April 24, 1968

Ayers Rock / Uluru Song

When the pond fills fish appear
When the red pond dries fish disappear.
Everything built on the dessert crumbles to dust.
Electric cable transmission wires swept down.
The lizard people came out of the rock.
The red Kangaroo people forgot their own song.
Only an man with four sticks can cross the Simpson Desert.
One rain turns red dust green with leaves.
One raindrop begins the universe.
When the raindrop dries, worlds come to their end.

Central Australia, March 23, 1972

Dope Fiend Blues

Yes I'm a dope fiend, I don't believe your laws
Hey Mr Policeman I'm a dope fiend, take that joint out of your jaws
I'm a dopefiend and I'm getting out of jail because

I'm a dopefiend sitting in my bedroom high
I didn't even light up no muggles, don't know why
I'm just naturally a dopefiend under empty sky

Yes I'm a dopefiend I don't sniff cocaine
I hear the walls ringing my nose is stil in pain
It's snowing all round NY City gimme a 2 penny plain

Oho I'm a dopefiend shoulda seen me usta mainline
Yah shoulda seen me shoot that white heroine
useta get the chills but never burnt down my mind

Hey hey Oh Lord Dope Fiend I dropped LSD
I seen Manhattan's stick up in Eternity
Ten years ago you shoulda took the elevator up with me, Holy!

Ha Ha I'm a dopefiend niggerlovin Commie Fagot Queen
I'm a beatnick hippie longhair but a square I never been
But if you Mother see my picture in the paper she say I look clean

Hey I'm a dopefiend I'm a dopefiend I breathe sweet clean air
I don't shoot speed in my arm no more I'm a dopefiend everywhere
I'm a dopefiend in the policeman's eyes Yeah They wouldn't dare

To bust me for dopefiend I don't carry any shit around
I'm just a dopefiend by nature I like to sit on the ground
all naked with my clothes on make a blue mantra sound

I'm a dopefiend I roll my soul in friendly grass
Dopefiend Dopefiend I carry nothing but Dharma up my ass
Yeass all you dopefiends hear me! out there in the middle class!

Hey rich dopefiend when you gona change the laws?
Hey poor dopefiend join the Dharma party because
They gonna legalise existence, everybody ride a big whie horse

December 31, 1974

Manhattan May Day Midnight

I walked out on the lamp shadowed concrete at midnight May Day passing a dark'd barfront,
police found corpses under the floor last year, call-girls & Cadillacs lurked there on First Avenue
around the block from my apartment, I'd come downstairs for tonight's newspapers-
refridgerator repair shop's window grate padlocked, flourescent blue
light on a pile of newspapers, pages shifting in the chill Spring wind
'round battered cans & plastic refuse bags leaned together at the pavement edge-
Wind wind and old news sailed thru the air, old Times whirled above the garbage.
At the corner of 11th under dim street-light in a hole in the ground
a man wrapped in work-Cloth and wool Cap pulled down his bullet skull
stood & bent with a rod & flashlight turning round in his pit halfway sunk in earth
Peering down at his feet, up to his chest in the asphalt by a granite Curb
where his workmate poked a flexible tube in a tiny hole, a youth in gloves
who answered my question "Smell of gas-someone must've reported in"-

Yes the body stink of City bowels, rotting tubes six feet under
Could explode any minute sparked by Con Ed's breathing Puttering truck
I noticed parked, as I passed by hurriedly thinking Ancient Rome, Ur
Were they like this, the same shadowy surveyors and passers-by
scribing records of decaying pipes & Garbage piles on Marble, Cuneiform,
ordinary midnight citizen out on the street looking for Empire News,
rumour, gossip, workmen police in uniform, walking silent sunk in thought
under windows of sleepers coupled with Monster squids & Other-Planet eyeballs in their sheets
in the same night six thousand years old where Cities rise & fall & turn to dream?

May 1, 1978, 6 A.M.

Old Pond

The old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Hard road! I walked till both feet stunk-
Ma!Ma! Whatcha doing on that bed?
Pa!Pa! what hole you hide your head?

Left home got work down town today
Sold coke, got busted looking gay
Day dream, I acted like a clunk
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Got hitched, I bought a frying pan
Fried eggs, my wife eats like a man
Won't cook, her oatmeal tastes like funk
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Eat shit exactly what she said
Drink wine, it goes right down my head
Fucked up, they all yelled I was drunk
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Saw God at six o' clock tonight
Flop house, I think I'll start a fight
Head ache like both my eyeballs shrunk
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Hot dog! I love my mustard hot
Hey Rube! I think I just got shot
Drop dead she said you want some junk?
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Oh ho your dirty needle stinks
No no I don't shoot up with finks
Speed greed I stood there with the punk
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Yeh yeh gimme a breath of fresh air
Guess who I am well you don't care
No name call up the mocking monk
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

No echo, make a lot of noise
Come home you owe it to the boys
Can't hear you scream your fish's sunk
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Just folks, we bought a motor car
No gas I guess we crossed the bar
I swear we started for Podunk
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

I got his banjo on my knee
I played it like an old sweetie
I sang plunk-a-plunk plunk plunk plunk
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

One hand I gave myself the clap
Unborn, but I still took the rap
Big deal, I fell out of my bunk
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Hey hey! I ride down the blue sky
Sit down with worms until I die
Fare well! Hum Hum Hum Hum Hum!
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Red barn rise wet in morning dew
Cockadoo dle do oink oink moo moo
Buzz buzz-flyswatter in the kitchen, thwunk!
Th' old pond-a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

August 22, 1978

Ruhr-Gebiet

Too much industry
too much eats
too much beer
too much cigarettes

Too much philosophy
too many thought forms
not enough rooms-
not enough trees

Too much Police
too much computers
too much hi fi
too much pork

Too much coffee
too much smoking
under gray slate roofs
Too much obedience

Too many bellies
Too many business suits
Too much paperwork
too many magazines

Too much industry
No fish in the Rhine
Lorelei poisoned
Too much embarassment

Too many fatigued
workers on the train
Ghost Jews scream
on the streetcorner

Too much old murder
too much white torture
Too much one Stammheim
too many happy Nazis

Too many crazy students
Not enough farms
not enough Appletrees
Not enough nut trees

Too much money
Too many poor
Turks without vote
"Guests" do the work

Too much metal
Too much fat
Too many jokes
not enough meditation

Too much anger
Too much sugar
Too many smokestacks
Not enough snow

Too many radioactive
plutonium wastebarrels
Take the Rhine gold
Build a big tomb

A gold walled grave
to bury this deadly nuclear slag
all the Banks' gold
Shining impenetrable

All the German gold
will save the nation
Build a gold house
to bury the Devil

Allen Ginsberg, Heidelberg, December 15, 1979