It's true I write about myself
Who else do I know so well?
Where else gather blood red roses & kitchen garbage
What else has my thick heart, hepatitis or hemorrhoids -
What else lived my seventy years, my old Naomi?*
and if my chance I scribe U.S. politics, Wisdom
meditation, theories of art
it's because I read a newspaper loved
teachers skimmed books or visited a museum
March 8, 1997, 12:30 A.M.
* I think Naomi is Ginsberg's mother, Naomi (Levy) Ginsberg. She was diagnosed as suffering from paranoia. She was institutionalized, eventually lobotomised, and she died in an asylum in 1956. Her life is the "objective subject" of Ginsberg's poem 'Kaddish', which was written in one 40-hour session as a compensation of her funeral service, where there weren't enough male mourners present for the rabbi to read the funeral elegy, the kaddish.
photo via flickr
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