46 America poems

Yankee Doodle went to town, A-riding on a pony; Stuck a feather in his hat And called it macaroni.

Because we rage inside the old boundaries, like a young girl leaving the Church, scared of her parents. Because we all dream of saving the shaggy, dung-caked buffalo, shielding the herd with our bodies. Because grief unites us, like the locked antlers of moose who die on their knees in pairs.

1. Now you are all here you might as well know this is America we do what we like. 2. Be spontaneous it is the right way. 3. Mothers you have met before still defy comprehension. 4. Our scene is foggy we are asking you to clarify. 5. Explains geomoetry of life. Where? At Catholic Worker. 6. Very glad you came. With our mouths full of cornflakes we were expecting an emergency. 7. Cynics declare you are in Greece. 8. Better get back quick before the place is all used up. 9. The night court: the mumbling judge: confused. 10. Well-wishers are there to meet you head on. 11. For the journal: soldiers, harbingers of change. 12. You came just in time, the score is even. 13. None of the machines has yet been broken. 14. Come on we know you have seen Popes. 15. People have been a little self-conscious around here in the emergency. 16. Who cares what the cynics declare. But you have been in Greece.

soon, industry and agriculture converged and the combustion engine sowed the dirtclod truck farms green with onion tops and chicory mowed the hay, fed the swine and mutton through belts and chutes cleared the blue oak and the chaparral chipping the wood for mulch back-filled the marshes replacing buckbean with dent corn removed the unsavory foliage of quag made the land into a production made it produce, pistoned and oiled and forged against its own nature and—with enterprise—built silos stockyards, warehouses, processing plants abattoirs, walk-in refrigerators, canneries, mills & centers of distribution it meant something—in spite of machinery— to say the country, to say apple season though what it meant was a kind of nose-thumbing and a kind of sweetness as when one says how quaint knowing that a refined listener understands the doubleness and the leveling of the land, enduing it in sameness, cured malaria as the standing water in low glades disappeared, as the muskegs drained typhoid and yellow fever decreased even milksickness abated thanks to the rise of the feeding pen cattle no longer grazing on white snakeroot vanquished:    the germs that bedeviled the rural areas the rural areas also vanquished:    made monochromatic and mechanized, made suburban now, the illnesses we contract are chronic illnesses:    dyspepsia, arthritis heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, asthma chronic pain, allergies, anxiety, emphysema diabetes, cirrhosis, lyme disease, aids chronic fatigue syndrome, malnutrition, morbid obesity hypertension, cancers of the various kinds:    bladder bone eye lymph mouth ovary thyroid liver colon bileduct lung breast throat & sundry areas of the brain we are no better in accounting for death, and no worse:       we still die we carry our uninhabited mortal frames back to the land cover them in sod, we take the land to the brink of our dying:    it stands watch, dutifully, artfully enriched with sewer sludge and urea to green against eternity of green hocus-pocus:    here is a pig in a farrowing crate eating its own feces human in its ability to litter inside a cage to nest, to grow gravid and to throw its young I know I should be mindful of dangerous analogy: the pig is only the pig and we aren't merely the wide-open field flattened to a space resembling nothing you want me to tell you the marvels of invention?    that we persevere that the time of flourishing is at hand?    I should like to think it meanwhile, where have I put the notebook on which I was scribbling it began like: "the smell of droppings and that narrow country road . . ."

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? —Allen Ginsberg "Go ahead," I say to my neighbor at the Putney Co-op who tells me he can't complain. "Let it out. It's mid-March and there's still two feet of snow on the ground. Fukushima has just melted down and the Washington Monument cracked at its pyramidion. Put down your bags and sing. How many times dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage teacher must you walk down the aisles as a randy eidolon humming your tunes for us to start? Our song begins in silence and grows to a buzz. We make it up as we go along, then watch our numbers swell— ten thousand members who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Who fly like a swarm to join us in our chambers, which are these aisles." I'm singing without knowing it, carrying the tune of main things, lamenting the prices with Bernie Sanders. My neighbor joins me for no other reason than singing along as a member of the cast we call the multitudes of lonely shoppers. I roam the aisles with the sadness of America, juggling onions, blessing the beets. It's a local stage on which the country opens like a flower that no one sees beside the road. In my hungry fatigue, I'm shopping for images, which are free on the highest shelf but costly in their absence—the only ingredient here that heals my sight of blindness. I see you, Walt Whitman, pointing your beard toward axis mundi by the avocados, reading the labels as if they were lines, weighing the tomatoes on the scale of your palms, pressing the pears with your thumbs the way you did in Huntington, Camden, and Brooklyn. And you, also, Ruth and Hayden, at the checkout counter with empty bags you claim are full of apples, almonds, and bananas. What can you say to those outside who haven't read your poems? Who find it hard to get the news from poetry but die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. It's night. The Connecticut slips by across Rt. 5. The moon is my egg and stars, my salt. I score the music of the carrots, scallions, and corn in the frost of the freezer windows. The sough of traffic on 91 washes my ears with the sound of tires on blue macadam.The doors close in an hour....

Starspangled cowboy sauntering out of the almost- silly West, on your face a porcelain grin, tugging a papier-mâché cactus on wheels behind you with a string, you are innocent as a bathtub full of bullets. Your righteous eyes, your laconic trigger-fingers people the streets with villains: as you move, the air in front of you blossoms with targets and you leave behind you a heroic trail of desolation: beer bottles slaughtered by the side of the road, bird- skulls bleaching in the sunset. I ought to be watching from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront when the shooting starts, hands clasped in admiration, but I am elsewhere. Then what about me what about the I confronting you on that border, you are always trying to cross? I am the horizon you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso I am also what surrounds you: my brain scattered with your tincans, bones, empty shells, the litter of your invasions. I am the space you desecrate as you pass through.

Alan drives a cab at night, Has cab driver’s elbow In his left arm, Sells real estate by day. Alan dreams of a big deal, Of opening a classy poolhall. Has a four million dollar deal Which will probably fall through, Has a big land deal with the Post Office But it will take 20 years to deliver Because they are so slow. Alan collects baseball cards and comic books Hates condos and townhouses Though he lives in one. Was a trader for nineteen and one-half years Then fired when the market melted. Alan, even if he was rich, Would not let his stepdaughter By his second wife Have her own phone and private line Like her rich friend Rebecca has Because after all she is only twelve. Alan, half Jewish, has three tattoos. “I got them recently because I wanted them. My Jewish aunt nearly had a stroke When she saw them.” Alan admits he is a pack rat saving Everything, loves wood, restoration, and antiques. Alan admires the people who buy old houses And fix them up. Hates the development of Staten Island Blaming it on the people from Brooklyn. Alan was cooking sausages and onions (His other half is Italian) In his back yard When a woman knocked his parked car Into the next block, Totaled it; he got $1,200 more Than it was worth. Alan found a turtle and put It in a safe stream, Stopped a dog from killing a cock In historic Richmondtown. Alan hates the dump— ninety-four percent of the garbage there Is dropped by the other boroughs— Likes the idea of secession, Staten Island free and independent. Alan apologetically asks If he didn’t talk too much As he brings me to my destination. He leaves me a great silence And I wish I had one million American bucks To tip the exuberant Alan. Alan, take this million bucks Strip the paint off the good wood of your dreams And tattoo the tedious days.

Whatever it is, it must have A stomach that can digest Rubber, coal, uranium, moons, poems. Like the shark it contains a shoe. It must swim for miles through the desert Uttering cries that are almost human.

The amendment process is slow on purpose they knew we'd want to change things fast they made us wait sometimes the waiting is wisdom sometimes it's just waiting

At the Courthouse Square On the Fourth of July, Beneath Old Glory’s Pyrotechnic sky, The town fathers met, Minus Bible and rye. Against the statue Of Confederate dead The Mayor spat His snuff and said, “We need a slogan!” And he palmed his head. The Sheriff’s idioms Dynamited assent. The Judge croaked a phrase Latinistically bent. And the Mayor pondered With official intent. On a neon billboard, As high as a steeple, The travelers puzzle The amazing sequel: The Blackest Land And The Whitest People.