Ok, not exactly new.
But this is an excerpt from a collection of poetry I'm working on. Comments and criticism are welcome. This was written as a tribute to Allen Ginsberg on the 10th anniversary of his death.
4. America 2007
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents won't even buy a gallon of gas June 12, 2007.
I can't stand my president's mind.
America when will we end war?
Go fuck yourself with your Guantanamo.
Your Patriot Acts like a fool.
I won't write my poem till you're in my right mind.
America when will you be rational?
When will you take off your mask?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
I refuse to be reasonable.
America pragmatism is a compromise between idealism and barbarity.
America realism is an excuse for barbarity.
Are you being barbaric?
I haven't read a newspaper for months every day another editorial tells me it's ok to torture.
America I feel sentimental about the Bill of Rights.
America I'm still a communist at heart I'm not sorry.
My mind is made up; there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
America are you going to let your emotional life be run by People Magazine?
I hate People Magazine.
I'm forced to read its insipid cover every time I go to the grocery store.
It's always telling me about famous people.
Actors are famous. Athletes are famous. Everybody's famous but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
What chance do I have?
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two computers, millions of brain cells, an unpublishable train of thought that thunders at a zillion miles an hour and should be kept in a mental institution.
Not to mention my cat, or the millions of uninsured Americans who live paycheck to paycheck under the watchful eye of the credit reporting agencies.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a left-handed gay Jew.
America how can I write a holy litany in Allen Ginsberg's silly mood?
My strophes are as individual as Allen's, more so they're all stolen from him.
America free the detainees in your secret CIA prisons.
America get the hell out of Iraq.
America constitutional rights must not die.
America when I was twenty I went to the biennial convention of the Socialist International in Paris I heard speeches by Tony Blair and Gerhardt Schroeder and Yasser Arafat walked right by me and everyone was angelic and sentimental about the workers even though none of them knew what it meant to be one we had this one party on a yacht in the Seine in fancy suits and got up on the roof and sang the Internationale clutching champagne flutes and million dollar smiles.
Everybody must have been a hypocrite.
America you really don't want to go to war again.
America it's them bad Arabs. Them Arabs them Arabs and them North Koreans. And them Arabs.
Them Arabs want to eat us alive.
Them Arabs want to take the crosses out of our churches.
Them Arabs want to blow themselves up in our synagogues.
Them Arabs are religion mad.
They want to fly planes into Chicago. Them want to blow up their shoes in Cleveland. Them need a copy of the Koran in all of our hotel rooms.
That no good.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from watching cable news.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or flip burgers at a fast food joint; I'm near-sighted and hyperactive anyway.
America I'm putting my own queer shoulder to the wheel.
