hey ginsberg

dear ginsberg (not the cat. my friend has a cat named ginsberg). no, let's try that again. (how am i supposed to write ginsberg a letter. i am not a beat poet. i don't smoke and i will never wear a beret. i am not writing this over coffee. i am writing this waiting for the laundry to dry, and i am not wearing socks.) ok. hey ginsberg. i would like to quote your poem.

which poem? howl. i know. everyone wants to quote howl, everyone wants the expanded edition and tiny chunks of it tattooed into their wrists while your other poems wither from neglect. but that's because it's....well, i have a list of reasons.

Ginsberg I Would Like To Quote Your Poem in My Poem and This is Why You Should Let Me:
  
1. i am jewish in a really lapsed way that you would probably appreciate. because i am jewish i wanted to quote your poem kaddish but i thought i would be a hypocrite to quote a poem called kaddish when i don't actually know how to say the real thing. not that your poem isn't a real kaddish. it's kaddish for all the nice lapsed jewish girls like me who never went to hebrew school and read your poems instead. 
2. i wanted to say kaddish for a friend of mine who died but i don't know how and he would have laughed at me. if you were alive i would say please write a kaddish for atheists. (maybe your kaddish is also for atheists?) you're not alive, so i have to write my own. i won't hold this against you.
3. i can't say kaddish (i can't even read hebrew, maybe if i tell you this you will feel bad for me and let me quote your poem) but i wanted to do something for my friend who died and then i remembered all i really know how to do is write poems anyway. sometimes.
4. because i saw the best mind of my generation destroyed by madness. ginsberg believe me.
5. because everything you said to carl solomon i should have said to my friend who died and i didn't.
6. i wasn't actually with him in rockland, the day i called to go visit him the nurse told me he had been discharged.
7. because i was too scared to go see him and i am going to write a poem to make myself feel better.
8. i was scared to go see him because i thought maybe i should be in there too.
9. i don't know why i was scared, i have a long family history of mental illness. or maybe that's why.
10. actually, my father has the same name as you and he's named after a mental hospital.
11. my father is named after a mental hospital because that's where his parents met.
12. that's a true story, i don't know why i told you that. um. ok.
13. you're dead.
14. you and my friend are dead and i would like to write a decent poem for both of you because i can't say kaddish.

i hope that's ok with you ginsberg.

sincerely,
leah