Model prisoner or not, I won't.
Silver lash, hound's tooth,
meager sinful town's crook.
I am nervous again. I could kill
if you let me. But tonight, I'll be still
under this palm. Zeroed out,
the tea my toilet muck.
Licorice and almond
twisted beneath the sink,
I'm lovely again. Come on
with my dying.
Today the globe's underside
isn't pink, but rather,
I look ahead toward what
has happened.
America I’ ve given you all and now I’ m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’ t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’ t feel good don’ t bother me.
I won’ t write my poem till I’ m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison
Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can’ t tell the show from the commercials,
And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,
He says that even when he’ s driving to the mall in his Isuzu
In 1963 the morning probably seemed harmless enough
to sign on the dotted line as the insurance man
talked to my parents for over an hour
around a coffee table about our future.
This roof wasn't designed to withstand meteors
he told my father, who back then had a brush haircut
that made his ears stick out, his moods
still full of passion, still willing to listen,
my mother with her beehive hairdo,
smiling back at him, all three of them
wanting so much to make the fine print
of the world work. They laughed
Those four black girls blown up
in that Alabama church
remind me of five hundred
middle passage blacks,
in a net, under water
in Charleston harbor
so redcoats wouldn't find them.
Can't find what you can't see
can you?
But to whatever animal we ascribe these remains, it is certain such a one has existed in America, and that it has been the largest of all terrestrial beings. It should have sufficed to have rescued the earth it inhabited, and the atmosphere it breathed, from the imputation of impotence....
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
I called for armour, rose, and did not reel.
But when I thought...
I could feel
My wound open wide.
— Thom Gunn, “The Wound”
THE STATES
In america,
I place my ring
on your cock
where it belongs.
No horsemen
bearing terror,
no soldiers of doom
will swoop in
and sweep us apart.
They’ re too busy
looting the land
to watch us.
They don’ t know
we need each other
critically.
They expect us to call in sick,
watch television all night,
die by our own hands.
They don’ t know
we are becoming powerful.
Every time we kiss
we confirm the new world coming.
I miss the moshpit pushed to the side of the bed.
The hard and fast rules, the business,
Walking across town the baby’ s hand in mine
Gave me anxiety Rosado barely mellowed.
Who doesn’ t love to hear about anxiety.
You wouldn’ t be too wrong to wake from dreaming
Into an amusement park sluice of Rioja
Eau de post-Auden thanks a lot Timex hubbub.
Those feelings are in their way good luck.
I don’ t even need a communion wafer
To feel the need to broadcast imprecations
Fade like a docent as the hedge fund falls.
All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee,
He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see.
He is a man of genius bright,
And in him his congregation does delight,
Because they find him to be honest and plain,
Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain.
He preaches in a plain straightforward way,
The people flock to hear him night and day,
And hundreds from the doors are often turn’ d away,
Because he is the greatest preacher of the present day.
He has written the life of Sir Walter Scott,
There was a church in Umbria, Little Portion,
Already old eight hundred years ago.
It was abandoned and in disrepair
But it was called St. Mary of the Angels
For it was known to be the haunt of angels,
Often at night the country people
Could hear them singing there.
