i look at her
and she is goddess 
loop and knot 
 
i look away
and she's ocean sky flow
breather of this breath 

i look within
and i am at her feet
removing her sandals 

i look without
and i'm depth ebb
space silenced

America, Why I Love Her
Written by John Mitchum
Poet/Actor

You ask me why I love her? Well, give me time, and I'll explain...
Have you seen a Kansas sunset or an Arizona rain?
Have you drifted on a bayou down Louisiana way?
Have you watched the cold fog drifting over San Francisco Bay?


Have you heard a Bobwhite calling in the Carolina pines?
Or heard the bellow of a diesel in the Appalachia mines?
Does the call of Niagara thrill you when you hear her waters roar?
Do you look with awe and wonder at a Massachusetts shore...
Where men who braved a hard new world, first stepped on Plymouth Rock?
And do you think of them when you stroll along a New York City dock ?


Have you seen a snowflake drifting in the Rockies...way up high?
Have you seen the sun come blazing down from a bright Nevada sky?
Do you hail to the Columbia as she rushes to the sea...
Or bow your head at Gettysburg...in our struggle to be free?


Have you seen the mighty Tetons? ...Have you watched an eagle soar?
Have you seen the Mississippi roll along Missouri's shore?
Have you felt a chill at Michigan, when on a winters day,
Her waters rage along the shore in a thunderous display?
Does the word "Aloha"... make you warm?
Do you stare in disbelief When you see the surf come roaring in at Waimea reef?


From Alaska's gold to the Everglades...from the Rio Grande to Maine...
My heart cries out... my pulse runs fast at the might of her domain.
You ask me why I love her?... I've a million reasons why.
My beautiful America... beneath Gods' wide, wide sky.





[topp]

they are different
    just look at them
their skin color  their clothing  their speech
their customs   the way they move their bodies

we like them as tourists
they leave money in our country
and then go home again

if they buy the house next to us
THAT’s different

it takes a conscious effort
to see them not as aliens
    but as our neighbors

lest we become aware
that all of us are aliens
in most countries of our globe

Ive given up
on you,
on me.
On you and me.

For you will
never
Be for me.

And thats
OK.
Or at least
it will be.

How dark and long the night
Growing up in the care
Of you, my mother
Unstable and violent
With fists as fast as your hair-trigger temper
I was very young when I learned to take a punch
And fly across a room with the best of them

But you taught me to read before I started school
And you read Dickens to me for hours
Igniting my love of words and stories
But even then
The storm could crash at any time
"What a quiet, well-behaved little boy.
Isn't he shy?"

But the worst thing you ever did to me
You told a lie as big as the moon
You said that my real father, the gypsy
Was dead
When I met him, in my teens
The world lurched slightly
And never went back to normal
And the worst thing is
I was still too scared to call you a liar

                                              By Phil Roberts

Strobes of light bounce around you
And the forces keep pulling me in.
Im out of my depth in this moment,
But the forces keep pulling me in.

The mystery compels me forward
And the shadow keeps me away.
Out of the darkness you appeared
To take me to solace once more.

Passion seeps from your words,
And the forces keep pulling me in.
Im scared to let myself go,
But the forces keep pulling me in.