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

Just a drink of water,
to quench my thirst
for your presence
for ever---

A loving pat on one cheek
for all the love on me you showered,
and softly, ever so softly
on the other cheek
give  the parting kiss for keeps.

That's all I ask for,
all the love we shared between us
never fully contained in whispers and kisses
all night conversations and caresses.

Taking a deep breath, look in to my eyes,
and pour all your blues, for me not to forget,
we are a coagulated scented mass, rare
no one in this world could separate.

Let me  emulate the wind, that rustles leaves
well before leaving without telling anything
and in return shuffle my hair, like before,
I will leave smiling, without thinking.
even when my heart is in fire hissing:
"Ah! this is how it all ends, never to repeat"

I 've learned the art of containing pain,
quite early in my life, without much effort,
a white fluffy haired pup,my dad's first gift,
that made happy beyond my little heart's content,
the one I bathed cared and fed, day and night
left for ever, in one cold  after noon...
heart broken I wept, tried to wake him up
Dad consoled "Let's buy another".It didn't help, a bit.

But when the pet parakeet, that flew around our home
was made his meal by our own rouge cat
the scattered wings, feathers and bones scared,
I didn't cry or panic, the pain died down within
I was learning a lesson then for a path strewn with thorns.

I'll walk away straight, with a smile,
like many smiles went past you,
but now, I know  you'll whimper,
But don't,  please don't shed that drop of tear
at the corner of your eye, hold it there,
it'll mutely tell you about a love divine, for ever.

Dear Hello Poetry
You like my poems!
This is weird.
What do I have to show
for all those years
scribbling on a tiny notepad?
In my pocket:
$1.53,
an old shopping list featuring
cat food and half-and-half,
also the IPhone I'm using
to compose this missive,
some lint.

Dear Hello Poetry
you made me start writing
poetry again.

I thought I was done with all that.
It's too hard
takes up too much of my time.
Every second I spend
arm-wrestling a poem
is a second I could be using
to eat peanut butter on toast
or walk the dog.

Dear Hello Poetry -
because of you
somebody with an improbable hat
called me a poet.

Don't tell my mother.

And Hello Poetry -
because of you
I cannot buy a hat.

But I'll get over all of that.
I forgive you, Hello Poetry.

But please don't tell my mother.