(This work is in dialogue with Allen Ginsburg’s poem “America” written 54 years ago in Berkeley, California. Aspects of the form are borrowed from him as a means of dialogue, as a means of launching. The apostrophe in the title signifies fragmentation.)
a’merica, you are not the only America.
a’merica this poem is longer than Allen’s because it has been adjusted for inflation, so grab a knee.
a’merica I’ll warn you now that I’m not as funny as Allen.
a’merica three dollars and ninety-nine cents February 15th, 2010.
a’merica all has been given and all is still not yet to be.
My mind cannot stand me.
The human war has shape-shifted.
It is live, in hi-definition.
You have relished the taste of gunmetal and nuclear war.
Fuck you and your Patriot Act.
You reek of racist filth in every corridor of your language.
What the fuck does that do to someone’s consciousness?
a’merica the crusades still burn in the projects where the children are lynched by your education.
What’s it take to get a decent grocery store ‘round here?
The children read from rotten books, books eaten by mice, digital books that glow in the dark, books on tape that read to them while they stare…
a’merica ketchup is still not a vegetable.
a’merica your farms, your rivers, your coasts - are dying.
a’merica you didn’t steal the votes this time? But it’s never too late.
a’merica congrats on the new President, lets sell an aircraft carrier and build some schools.
You continue the Crusade in the East –
the ancient semen of fascist papacies and Constantine’s sword.
Here’s Tom with the weather.
I feel actual hopefulness so please don't bother me anymore.
I am writing this poem to get into the mind of you at this precipice.
a’merica will you always be the demon-angel wannabe savior of the world?
When will you stop hating your sex-flesh?
When will you stop laughing at your penis and your vagina?
When will you swallow?
When will you eat your mirror?
When will you find worth in the multitudes?
a’merica why are your libraries vacant?
a’merica when will you stop being America?
I'm nauseated with your verboseness.
I am trying to forgive you, but I have not forgiven myself.
a’merica when will I be able to afford the good-looking food at the supermarket?
a’merica the next world approaches and you are ending.
The Maya tattooed it on the stones.
Your machines are ventriloquists.
You made me shed the notions of saint and sinning.
You can not even bare to smell your own shit rotting in the mountains of Afghanistan!
a’merica is one American life worth more than one Pashtun farmer?
Spell p-a-s-h-t-u-n with your google.
The only way to settle this argument is not to settle.
Ginsberg is in Jersey with the worms only to return as Uncle Liberty.
Are you the harbinger or is this the charade?
There is no point that I am coming to.
There is just this attempt to report to Allen the state of things.
This is an obsession of becoming.
a’merica the seasons come later and later every year.
The newspapers malfunction into blogispheric oblivion.
Somewhere, there is a symphony of mass shootings.
a’merica do you know how to make a mixed tape. The plastic kind?
Do you even know how to listen without pushing the button?
a’merica every bomb you drop is a nail in your coffin.
a’merica have you ever heard about Rome?
You can only play it close to the chest for so long.
The closet is bursting with skeletons for everyone to see.
And you do nothing.
And I do nothing.
All I do is type and judge.
a’merica the Mountaintop has come home to roost.
The Promised Land is a human heart.
It has grown up to take the reigns without apology.
The old guard is falling and I can hear you whimper.
I breathe the air every time I can remember to take a breath.
I leave the house to wrestle with the forces of ineptitude.
When I go to Texas I get high having gentle orgies in a feast of love.
My brain is not made up of mind.
You should have seen me reading Zinn.
My shrink feels like my life is a creative process.
I will say the Kaddish and then take a bath.
I will not pledge my allegiance.
I have second sight and astral projection.
a’merica you shot my brother in the face!
You shot Fred Hampton is his sleep.
You shot Amadou Diallo through his wallet.
Sean’s Bells ring in your stale ears.
I am addressing you!
Is it even your fucking job?
I am obsessed with Democracy Now, Wax Poetics and The Economist.
I read porn every week.
I lick the faces of every People, US, Oprah, Living, plasma screen.
Their jovial covers shout to me every time I pass by the homeless guy.
I try to read at the Library of Congress, but they never let me in.
So I read standing up, or on the shitter, or on the computer, or naked in bed.
I read my student loan bills and the numbers are serious.
My undergraduate degree is the cost of a Senator’s monthly mortgage on a second home.
I'm getting serious.
I am you a’merica.
Myself is talking to you – myself is.
Asia has risen, and is it OK. I'm fucking sick of you paranoia.
They torture and sell just like a’merica.
Economic nationalism is the new Kool-aid.
I got about enough of a chance as China does.
My natural resources are comprised of musical instruments, balls of cat hair, kisses, multiple
orgasms, both given and received transmissions. A love supreme, leagues of un-publishable
poems and un-singable melodies that stretch the imagination traveling at the speed of light!
Is it time to reevaluate your two point two million prisoners?
Department of correction is a contradiction in paradox.
My Uncle Scott just got out and can’t find a job.
He yells at the checkout girl at the grocery store.
He was a Talmudic genius – but he fried his brain in your prison cells.
Your ten million homeless?
Your forty-eight million uninsured?
Your 'hypocratic' oath?
a’merica do you know the definition of insanity?
I have not abolished anything but your cynicism.
a’merica your label is sticking out of your ass.
a’merica how to wax poetic of your holy hollow hallows and your jovial hosannas?
Does my body make me a bad boy?
I will continue like Rupert Murdoch my stanzas are as thieving as his intellect
more so they are multi-dimensional and sexless.
a’merica I will ebay you stanzas fer $2,666,666.00 apiece.
a’merica the dollar is worth less that it was in 1971.
a’merica free Leonard Peltier.
a’merica free Mumia Abu Jamal.
a’merica you reek of the same hypocrisy you seek to oppose.
I am not my sister tending to her husband’s post traumatic stress disorder.
He was a true believer.
He killed for you a’merica. He shot Cambodian’s in the head from a thousand yards.
He undercovered copped his way through the drug war.
He brought home the bacon.
You took away his pension. He held his partner while he lay dying in your streets.
He still flies his flag, but not for you.
It is for the concept.
a’merica I am not Lawrence King. Ramona Moore. Abdo Ali Ahmed. Pamela Waechter.
a’merica do you even know who they are?
a’merica slavery has not ended.
Women and children are being trafficked like kilos, like waste, like oil.
a’merica the shell-shocked soldiers are lining up our streets.
a’merica your wars are not video games.
Your wars are not businesses.
a’merica it's them Talibansz and them Muzzlims.
Them Jewzz and them Erabs. Them Obamaz. Them Sheiks.
Your television is like a fifties rerun with new pronouns.
You just want all that oil.
That ‘erl’ as we say back is TayHass
That black gold got you hooked.
Uncle Sam is a junkie strung out on oil and money.
I hear Lady Liberty’s turnin’ tricks to pay off her mortgage.
And them poppy fields of black tar keep the C.I.A.’s umbilical chord from choking.
a’merica do you know what “blowback” is?!
Our filling stations are taking in other forces of nature.
a’merica you are melting away.
a’merica
We gotta keep their feet to the fire.
Resistance breeds suffering.
The sum of all parts does not equal the equation.
A’merica I'm putting my bony shoulder to the axis mundi.
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Ryan Blum-Kryzstal, February 15, 2010 – “Brooklyn, New York City, where they paint murals of Biggie.”
