I now know why, living outside America, we were never introduced to American poetry. In fact, we thought America never had any remarkable poets… Had their voices been known outside these borders, nobody would want to come live here. The rate of immigration would have slowed down… even stopped.
And where would America have been then?
America: I’ve given you all and now I am nothing (Allen Ginsberg)
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing…
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
We’re living in another recession
depression
and I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked
(yes Allen)
What is it with you, oh America, that you act like a flock of blind sheep without a shepherd
no direction till someone popularizes one iconic item, markets one flawed artifact
and you all jump into the river, a migratory stampede into over-indulgence
exploitation that leaves the weak naked and the rich spinning more gold
Rumpelstiltskin
demanding our jewels, our relationships, our off-spring
shameless America
our mother Earth is dying and her children dance in rags
and in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway
across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night
to free us with new poets
who can tell the naked
truth
and rekindle a flame in the mediocre minds of my generation
so the windows of the skull can again reflect the light
that called us here
to America
Oh yes, Allen
it also occurred to me that I am America