And now, the ballad of the question
What keeps mankind alive?

You gentlemen who think you have a mission
To purge us of the seven deadly sins
Should first sort out the basic food position
Then start your preaching, that's where it all begins

You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well
Should learn for once the way the world is run
However much you twist, or whatever lies you tell
Food is the first thing, morals follow on

So first be sure that those, who are now starving
Get proper helpings, when we all start carving

What keeps mankind alive?
What keeps mankind alive, the fact that millions
Are daily tortured, starved, silenced, and oppressed
Mankind can keep alive, thanks to his aptitude
For keeping his humanity repressed
And now for once, you must try to face the facts
Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts
And now for once, you must try to face the facts
Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts

"To John Dillinger and hope he is still alive.
Thanksgiving Day November 28 1986"



Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shat out through wholesome
American guts.


Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

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

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen,
feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' 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 the
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories-- all right 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.

AH POOK IS HERE

When I become Death, Death is the seed from which I grow…

Itzama, spirit of early mist and showers.
Ixtaub, goddess of ropes and snares.
Ixchel, the spider web, catcher of morning dew.
Zooheekock, virgin fire patroness of infants.
Adziz, the master of cold.
Kockupocket, who works in fire.
Ixtahdoom, she who spits out precious stones.
Ixchunchan, the dangerous one.
Ah Pook, the destroyer.

Hiroshima, 1945, August 6, sixteen minutes past 8 AM.

Who really gave that order?

Answer: Control.

Answer: The Ugly American.

Answer: The instrument of Control.

Question: If Control’s control is absolute, why does Control need to control?

Answer: Control… needs time.

Question: Is Control controlled by its need to control?

Answer: Yes.

Why does Control need humans, as you call them?

Answer: Wait… wait! Time, a landing field. Death needs time like a junkie needs junk.

And what does Death need time for?

Answer: The answer is sooo simple. Death needs time for what it kills to grow in, for Ah Pook’s sake.

Death needs time for what it kills to grow in, for Ah Pook’s sweet sake, you stupid vulgar greedy ugly American death-sucker.

Death needs time for what it kills to grow in, for Ah Pook’s sweet sake, you stupid vulgar greedy ugly American death-sucker… Like this.

We have a new type of rule now. Not one man rule, or rule of aristocracy, or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision. They are representatives of abstract forces…

Ah Pook picks up a double-barrel shotgun and opens the breech, where two shells are chambered. It closes the breech.

…who’ve reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of the past. There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers. The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident…

Ah Pook is caressing the shotgun.

…inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a…

Ah Pook puts the shotgun into its mouth, and its voice continues:

…vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push.

Ah Pook pulls the trigger.

— WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

i understand. thank you.