Peter Orlovsky
America, Give A Shit!
America, Give A Shit!
New York City – Get Your Shit Together
You have to sit & think this thing out Peter –
How maney pounds does my city shit & piss a day?
How do we scoop it all up – collected?
& composted & brought back to farms
whear it belongs all along.
It’s a great job & my pay is human manure,
I want a hundread pounds an hour
because I’m a hard worker,
or should I ask for more?
Always wanted to dig with a shuvel
in frunt our East Side Manhattan apt.
I know worm droppings are 15 dollars a pound.
I’ll have to go study cities sewage blue prints
& dream of vacuum-flush toilets.
Remembering Allen & me walking to East River
around 17th Street
& there we saw the sewage flow about 2 feet deep
out 6 foot diameter tunnel
slowely moveing melting into East River.
What interesting surprise brown flow discovery,
on its way to East Rivers garden floor.
Even cows dont throw away their plop
but let it drop
near many eating pasture spots
& next year dung turns into better green
grass than before.
Organic Gardening Magazine gets excited about reporting
China’s engenuity in recycling 99% of the human manure
of Shanghai’s 14 million population
while Chinese farm girls in the field sing
odes to human dung
while raking more dried human manure
into the ground under persimmon fruit trees
as their babies sit nearby on the ground looking up
at the clear blue sky
listening to mama’s human fertilizer song.
1977 NYC