The gleam of the skyscraper is like sunlight on
a pond glimpsed through trees or a free
and joyous river

I am thirsty, yet I have no desire to drink. The well
is poisoned.

The towering architecture opens to the marvels of modernity; their shining windows reveal
the revered throne rooms of CEOs, and workers tapping away
an army of ants to ensure order, according to their rules
and handbooks but above all
by uncertain individuals watching those around them.

And the violence of their tapping keyboards and polite emails
and the penthouses to which they aspire
the life of a bank throbbing
through the steel skeleton of a building that is larger than life,
larger than
those left to die
      trying to get some sleep in the streets
      kicked in the ribs by police
      a different kind of life haunts their heartbeats.

The city has swallowed its own streets and sidewalks
and spits out skeletons
bones dry from its desperate extraction
****** to dust to coat that shining cityskape, the sweat and blood drained from pores to make the steel and the glass
drips away slowly, revealing only dust.

The well is poisoned -
I am dying of thirst -
I wonder which death
will be less painful

untethered
uprooted
the soles of my feet
tingle from nothingness

the dry scrape of the air conditioner in seattle and
hardwood floors that hold no softness
city skyscape gleaming silver
a beacon to the
unmodernized less fortunate
of hope to become
automatons like us, to become more-than-human like us

untethered

what is human
we must be, i suppose, and yet -
if we are not 'what it means to be human'
if my heart is content in its coldness
is that wrong

i have betrayed - but - who?

to be untethered is to be true, to drift
from the solid shores of meaning is to fly and
to be free means to let the beautiful parts of yourself die and

I have made my decision.

I'm a little too familiar with
gas station coffee
(and restrooms)
I know all of the roads and the mountains
that line them
I have known every cheap motel
stared at every continental breakfast
(burned coffee and rubber eggs)
and I can pack for anything in ten minutes or less.

I have known cities lit by the night
and passes comfortably fringed by fog
skeleton trees on dead beaches
gas-station Cheetos eaten at 3 am
sleeping on a friends shoulder
or listening to another iPod playlist
alone in the dark
the casual immodesty between traveling partners
and wearing 3 layers of sweats
to ward off the cold of the journey.
I re-read poetry by flashlight
while ghosts of headlights flutter
as I leave everything behind me
again.

I love the road blazing by
because it takes me a way from everything I remember
away from the family that is not mine
away from the cages and bars and lies about my beliefs
about my identity
the oppression of mandatory religion
the self-destructive hate
who I used to be.

I wrote poems about my knives because they were my comfort
they were beautiful to me
I romanticized my pain because I was a romantic at heart
but a romantic without love
and so I turned to blood and knives and tried to make it into poetry
thought that it could somehow be beautiful
and the sad thing is that it was
it gave more comfort than my family,
it was closer than my friends,
more reliable than any god.

The road scours that all away, reminds me
that I can leave, I am free, there is more to the world
than what I grew up knowing.
More than Rush Limbaugh and misogynist preachers
more than latent racism and open homophobia
more than my shame in my acceptance of these as normal
there is a whole world where
people don't live chained to bibles
and that gives me hope.

I have never known home here,
but driving and driving and driving
shows me that the world is larger than I know
and maybe I can find it somewhere.

Hands on the wheel
window half open
I stare down the road into the perfect golden sunset
toward the city and the sea
the verdant spring forcefully blooming me into mania
the radio singing me onward
All I want, all I ever wanted
to leave
I have my debit card and a full tank of gas
I can go anywhere.

I sigh
pull onto the exit
and drive slowly home.

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 **** 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?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
        need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
        the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
        it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
        joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
        somebody goes on trial for ******.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
        I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
        in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
        Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
        Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
        candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
        men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
        Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
        marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
        private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
        and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
        underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
        under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
        is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
        I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
        mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
        individual as his automobiles more so they're
        all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
        down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
        munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
        handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
        speeches were free everybody was angelic and
        sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
        cere you have no idea what a good thing the
        party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
        old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
        cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
        must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
        And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
        mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
        garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
        Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
        Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
        tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
        Him need ******* *******. Hah. Her make us
        all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
        the television set.
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 turn lathes
        in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
        psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

                                Berkeley, January 17, 1956