Allen Ginsberg - A Supermarket in California (recommended version)


   What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Disney, for I walked down the sidestreets of Disneyland under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
   In my hungry fantasia, and shopping for images, I went into the neon DisneyStore, dreaming of your enumerations!
   What giant peaches and what penumbras! Whole Robinson families shopping at night! Aisles full of Beauties! Beasts in the avocados, Mary Poppins in the tomatoes!--and you, Cinderella, what were you doing down by the pumpkins?

    I saw you, Walt Disney, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the cryogenic containers and eyeing the NeverLand boys.
   I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the lions, the elephants and the deers? What price going bananas? Are you my Angel, Jiminy?
   I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of Nemo-cans following you, and followed in my imagination by Mister Incredible.
   We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting "Eat-me" cakes, possessing every poisoned apple, and never passing the cashier.

   Where are we going, Walt Disney? The doors at Monsters Inc. close in an hour. Which way does your hunchback point tonight?
   (I touch your Jungle Book and dream of our adventures in Wonderland and feel absurd.) Will we walk all night through a solitary Main Street? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the dwarves' houses, we'll both be lonely.

   Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past anthropomorphic beetles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old puppet-master, what America did you have when Aladdin quit flying his carpet and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the 3D dream disappear on the black waters of Wall-E?

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