When William Burroughs
Snarled Thanksgiving Grace

He was in fine form on that purposely grainy video, giving thanks for the Klu Klux Klan and ‘a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business.’ Bill Burroughs would live another decade before leaving us, but no one said grace in quite the same way.
3o years later, we’re bitter as ever, and he’d surely give us no thanks for the radical rightward turn we’ve allowed our political winds to take. We miss his snarl but he’s the one who would’ve been hurt by the cruel world we’ve been tending to since he’s left.
Today, as we digest millions of murdered birds, down our ‘wholesome American guts,’ and some heil a new white chief of the nation, we’ll borrow Burroughs‘ growl, while sewers burst open, and out come pouring ravenous rats. The many heroes who signed off this year make us moan and grieve.
Few will sharpen knives, check their ammo, thank their good fortune. Hunting season will start earlier this time. But most will avert their kids’ gaze, and try a thousand ways of telling them again that life’s unfairness shouldn’t be the point. But now they know there’s no Santa.
Yet, thanks to those with the steady gait and the flexed calfs, who bend but not break. The ‘indians, who provide a modicum of challenge and danger,’ fighting for water on behalf of all Americans who forgot them, at the Dakota Access Pipeline standoff. They’re are our natural gifts.
Yes, thanks for the grandmothers, the multi-linguals, the mixed races, the black lives that’ll still matter once this all pass, because it must and will. Thanks for the gender fluid, and for the targeted whistleblowers; they’ll deliver our message to the future.
Surely, Bill, ‘thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of the human dreams.’ But also for the little bloodletting with which we clean our wounds, and all the joy of playing Job when it comes our turn. Light comes only from pitch black.
Thanks for the thanks I’ll be forever indebted to give, to those I have yet to meet. And thanks for partying like it’s 1927, when the first balloon to fly at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was Felix the Cat. Two years later, many sharks finally had their day of reckoning.
We’ll fall into a turkey stupor for now but we’ll come back as we always do. By the way, something in the pumpkin pie didn’t agree with my stomach. Happy Thanks & Giving Day.
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