A poem by Allen Ginsberg, Braniff Air, Denver—Dallas, December 3, 1974
Oil brown smog over Denver
Oil red dung colored smoke
level to level across the horizon
blue tainted sky above
Oil car smog gasoline
hazing red Denver's day
December bare trees
sticking up from housetop streets
Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over
radar wheels, black smoke
drifts wobbly from tailfins
Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains
Oil from Texas, Bahrain, Venezuela Mexico
Oil that turns General Motors
revs up Ford
lights up General Electric, oil that crackles
thru International Business Machine computers
charges dynamos for ITT
sparks Western Electric
runs thru Amer Telephone & Telegraph wires
Oil that flows thru Exxon New Jersey hoses,
rings in Mobile gas tank cranks, rumbles
Chrysler engines
shoots thru Texaco pipelines,
blackens ocean from broken Gulf tankers
spills onto Santa Barbara beaches from
Stand of California derricks offshore.
A Celebration of Reading 