When a man starts out with nothing,
When a man starts out with his hands
Empty, but clean,
When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.

First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.

The eyes see there materials for building,
See the difficulties, too, and the obstacles.
The mind seeks a way to overcome these obstacles.
The hand seeks tools to cut the wood,
To till the soil, and harness the power of the waters.
Then the hand seeks other hands to help,
A community of hands to help-
Thus the dream becomes not one man's dream alone,
But a community dream.
Not my dream alone, but our dream.
Not my world alone,
But your world and my world,
Belonging to all the hands who build.

A long time ago, but not too long ago,
Ships came from across the sea
Bringing the Pilgrims and prayer-makers,
Adventurers and ***** seekers,
Free men and indentured servants,
Slave men and slave masters, all new-
To a new world, America!

With billowing sails the galleons came
Bringing men and dreams, women and dreams.
In little bands together,
Heart reaching out to heart,
Hand reaching out to hand,
They began to build our land.
Some were free hands
Seeking a greater freedom,
Some were indentured hands
Hoping to find their freedom,
Some were slave hands
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
But the word was there always:
   Freedom.

Down into the earth went the plow
In the free hands and the slave hands,
In indentured hands and adventurous hands,
Turning the rich soil went the plow in many hands
That planted and harvested the food that fed
And the cotton that clothed America.
Clang against the trees went the ax into many hands
That hewed and shaped the rooftops of America.
Splash into the rivers and the seas went the boat-hulls
That moved and transported America.
Crack went the whips that drove the horses
Across the plains of America.
Free hands and slave hands,
Indentured hands, adventurous hands,
White hands and black hands
Held the plow handles,
Ax handles, hammer handles,
Launched the boats and whipped the horses
That fed and housed and moved America.
Thus together through labor,
All these hands made America.

Labor! Out of labor came villages
And the towns that grew cities.
Labor! Out of labor came the rowboats
And the sailboats and the steamboats,
Came the wagons, and the coaches,
Covered wagons, stage coaches,
Out of labor came the factories,
Came the foundries, came the railroads.
Came the marts and markets, shops and stores,
Came the mighty products moulded, manufactured,
Sold in shops, piled in warehouses,
Shipped the wide world over:
Out of labor-white hands and black hands-
Came the dream, the strength, the will,
And the way to build America.
Now it is Me here, and You there.
Now it's Manhattan, Chicago,
Seattle, New Orleans,
Boston and El Paso-
Now it's the U.S.A.

A long time ago, but not too long ago, a man said:
        ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL--
        ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR
        WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS--
        AMONG THESE LIFE, LIBERTY
        AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
His name was Jefferson. There were slaves then,
But in their hearts the slaves believed him, too,
And silently too for granted
That what he said was also meant for them.
It was a long time ago,
But not so long ago at that, Lincoln said:
        NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
        TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
        WITHOUT THAT OTHER'S CONSENT.
There were slaves then, too,
But in their hearts the slaves knew
What he said must be meant for every human being-
Else it had no meaning for anyone.
Then a man said:
        BETTER TO DIE FREE
        THAN TO LIVE SLAVES
He was a colored man who had been a slave
But had run away to freedom.
And the slaves knew
What Frederick Douglass said was true.

With John Brown at Harper's Ferry, Negroes died.
John Brown was hung.
Before the Civil War, days were dark,
And nobody knew for sure
When freedom would triumph
"Or if it would," thought some.
But others new it had to triumph.
In those dark days of slavery,
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
The slaves made up a song:
   Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
That song meant just what it said: Hold On!
Freedom will come!
    Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
Out of war it came, ****** and terrible!
But it came!
Some there were, as always,
Who doubted that the war would end right,
That the slaves would be free,
Or that the union would stand,
But now we know how it all came out.
Out of the darkest days for people and a nation,
We know now how it came out.
There was light when the battle clouds rolled away.
There was a great wooded land,
And men united as a nation.

America is a dream.
The poet says it was promises.
The people say it is promises-that will come true.
The people do not always say things out loud,
Nor write them down on paper.
The people often hold
Great thoughts in their deepest hearts
And sometimes only blunderingly express them,
Haltingly and stumblingly say them,
And faultily put them into practice.
The people do not always understand each other.
But there is, somewhere there,
Always the trying to understand,
And the trying to say,
"You are a man. Together we are building our land."

America!
Land created in common,
Dream nourished in common,
Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
If the house is not yet finished,
Don't be discouraged, builder!
If the fight is not yet won,
Don't be weary, soldier!
The plan and the pattern is here,
Woven from the beginning
Into the warp and woof of America:
        ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.
        NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
        TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
        WITHOUT HIS CONSENT.
        BETTER DIE FREE,
        THAN TO LIVE SLAVES.
Who said those things? Americans!
Who owns those words? America!
Who is America? You, me!
We are America!
To the enemy who would conquer us from without,
We say, NO!
To the enemy who would divide
And conquer us from within,
We say, NO!
   FREEDOM!
     BROTHERHOOD!
         DEMOCRACY!
To all the enemies of these great words:
We say, NO!

A long time ago,
An enslaved people heading toward freedom
Made up a song:
     Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
The plow plowed a new furrow
Across the field of history.
Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
That tree is for everybody,
For all America, for all the world.
May its branches spread and shelter grow
Until all races and all peoples know its shade.
     KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW! HOLD ON!

1
Flood-Tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also face
   to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious
   you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
   home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more
   to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

2
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the
   day,
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every
   one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on
   the walk in the street and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to
   shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the
   heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half
   an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others
   will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the
   falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

3
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many
   generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the
   bright flow, I was refresh’d,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift
   current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the
   thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air
   floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left
   the rest in strong shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the
   south,
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my
   head in the sunlit water,
Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at
   anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender
   serpentine pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their
   pilothouses,

The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the
   wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the
   frolic-some crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the
   granite storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank’d on
   each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning
   high and glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow
   light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of
   streets.

4
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,
The men and women I saw were all near to me,
Others the same-others who look back on me because I look’d forward
   to them,
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)

5
What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails
   not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the
   waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon
   me,
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
I too had receiv’d identity by my body,
That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I
   should be of my body.

6
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,

The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality
   meagre?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me.
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not
   wanting,

Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these
   wanting,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as
   they saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of
   their flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet
   never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing,
   sleeping,
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we
   like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.

7
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you—I laid in my
   stores in advance,
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.

Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you
   now, for all you cannot see me?

8
Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than
   mast-hemm’d Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the
   twilight, and the belated lighter?

What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with
   voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as
   approach?
What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that
   looks in my face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?

We understand then do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not
   accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?

9
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the
   men and women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of
   Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public
   assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my
   nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or
   actress!
Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one
   makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be
   looking upon you;
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet
   haste with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in
   the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all
   downcast eyes have time to take it from you!
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any
   one’s head, in the sunlit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail’d
   schooners, sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower’d at sunset!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at
   nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!

Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest
   aromas,
Thrive, cities—bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and
   sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate
   henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves
   from us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently
   within us,
We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

MANY ways to spell good night.
  
Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
  
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue and then go out.
  
Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.
  
Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields to a razorback hill.
It is easy to spell good night.
  
        Many ways to spell good night.

THE GRAVE of Alexander Hamilton is in Trinity yard at the end of Wall Street.
  
The grave of Robert Fulton likewise is in Trinity yard where Wall Street stops.
  
And in this yard stenogs, bundle boys, scrubwomen, sit on the tombstones, and walk on the grass of graves, speaking of war and weather, of babies, wages and love.
  
An iron picket fence ... and streaming thousands along Broadway sidewalks ... straw hats, faces, legs ... a singing, talking, hustling river ... down the great street that ends with a Sea.
  
... easy is the sleep of Alexander Hamilton.
... easy is the sleep of Robert Fulton.
... easy are the great governments and the great steamboats.

LET us go out of the fog, John, out of the filmy persistent drizzle on the streets of Stockholm, let us put down the collars of our raincoats, take off our hats and sit in the newspapers office.
  
Let us sit among the telegrams-clickety-click-the kaiser's crown goes into the gutter and the Hohenzollern throne of a thousand years falls to pieces a one-hoss shay.
  
It is a fog night out and the umbrellas are up and the collars of the raincoats-and all the steamboats up and down the Baltic sea have their lights out and the wheelsmen sober.
  
Here the telegrams come-one king goes and another-butter is costly: there is no butter to buy for our bread in Stockholm-and a little patty of butter costs more than all the crowns of Germany.
  
Let us go out in the fog, John, let us roll up our raincoat collars and go on the streets where men are sneering at the kings.

One more
     every night just
                    one more.

my veins protrude a thin layer of skin
called the back of my hand
rivers of blood that I was shocked
to find are a very deep purple.
     What does that mean?
     Has my blood given up on me?
     Refused to bubble red and
     thunder through my Nile?
I saw the Nile during winter
and witnessed first hand how
its once thriving forget-me-not
blue has turned the murkiest
of brown.
It was very sad really.
Crocodiles replaced with stumps
of driftwood or perhaps
dead Egyptian bodies growing moss.
The Nile -the shadow of Cairo’s Gotham City-
     It was too cold to dip my feet in
     and I think even if it wasn’t I
     wouldn’t have done it really.
     It’s too scary.
Almost a waste of space I
have a feeling the Egyptians will
soon deal with that.
But right now like all rivers
I guess it must flow.
Injected with steamboats and pesticides
its waves subside to
a slowest of slow pace.
And it smells like a *****.

One more
     every night just
                    one more.

so that when I close my eyes
I see purple Niles in my dreams
leaking through half-closed eyelids
that move so swiftly I
wake up to blood stained sheets
even though razors are
locked in drawers along with
the many other horrors tucked away
neatly in a box, locked,
     who said we were all Pandora?
     If Prometheus was an idiot it
     Doesn’t mean I am. Keep something
     That good to yourself.
But wow what an idiot –there’s no point
fearing a recurring doom-
the mythological liar and thief
who took humanity a step forth and
then a million back.
we would’ve figured it out sooner or later…
or don’t people look at the bigger picture?
     What else would we have held
     under flattened aluminum?    

One more
     every night just
                    one more.

dizzy from the onslaught of the springtime I thank
my lucky stars for strings and steamboats I thank
my quiet mind for resting sometimes I think
my lungs are stretching in your absence I worry
that I ask too much of you

falling is feeling alive again on open roads and dusty lungs filled with old bones my closet feels so full of skeletons I got an adrenaline rush from killing a spider today royal flush full house of cobwebs and dead flies and wishing you and I were whole again
the smell of nail polish is ingrained in everything in my bedsheets bottles bleed black and red and gold and glitter
glitter always sticks to hardwood floors and skin I’m sick of things sticking to my skin I am not a spider web stop sticking to my skin
dusty decay painting my nails the color of old scrapbooks I take photos because I need memories to exist outside of me I can’t remember anything except how it feels to dry-swallow pain pills I’ve forgotten to brush my teeth for the 3rd day in a row old habits die when
count fireflies caught in your claws and claw the mouths from any man who catcalls or calls harassment a compliment fight fire with freefalls oxygen masks and steamboats I want to die on the peak of Mount Everest maybe then I can finally rest my hand hurts from my grip on the pen I stopped paying attention again
my hands won’t stop bleeding my cuticles are ripped again I want it to stop again I want my hands clean again I want to take care of myself again I want to be whole again I want to cover myself in nail polish and then fly
fall down the Grand Canyon

On the banks of the Mississippi
She shelters from the rain
Her cardboard made fortress
Is protecting her again
Destitute for years
Magnolia grows on the sides
Steamboats sail the river
The ones she imagines she rides
Counting the reeds by the hour
Talking to her bourbon bottled friend
Relieving a thousand memories
That all went wrong in the end
Dressed in her mite infested clothes
Clutching a ***** bag
A childhood full of love
It's adulthood that's the drag
Evicted from her home
Left to perish by the state
She dream't of being a singer
But now it's all to late
Alabama to the east Mexico to the south
Places she wished she'd been
Never going to happen now though
For this luckless Mississippi Queen

I: Down the mississippi I will go, past blushing steamboats and river banks and green mud, past algae pools, with turtles bobbing at the surface. I will march forth past crop circles, golden fields and everything worn down in Nebraska even the abandoned parks, nuclear mind fields, wastelands of pollution and industry (and don’t worry, there’s beauty too) like so many leaves I never knew there were so many oak trees that grew despite the steaming summer haze and the chomping ivy vines. I never knew the Southern forests were as thick as the Amazon.

Actias luna resides in the moss, an elated fairy, resting on hickory tree branches long enough to continue it’s periless flight.
I will carry myself, I will push through forest, prairie, city and not look back because
I won’t become a ghost in a foreign land. I won’t be there long enough to be remembered, or immortalized. I will not leave my metal plates or my stove behind because they can’t fit in a wagon I am
walking alone, not barefoot but I may as well be. I want to be in contact with the land, and I imagine

in this new land, we make do with what we have, and we are happy enough for the time being. we are comfortable in the waiting time.

A love poem is this ode, an explanation perhaps (to my mother) why I do not talk enough, why I stare out the dark windows as we peck at salmon, why all my words come out at once and too fast for my own tongue.

I have been imagining the open landscapes for a long time now, I have been picturing the Californian sky at night, I have been dreaming of Spanish moss and grape vines, I have been contemplating how blue, pink, and white clouds can exist in the same sky (maybe we can, too).

In this journey, this amalgamation of past and future, (as always), I’m brought back to the tide. Repetition, frothy salty cold repetition. Something not controlled by me, which I am not even a part of. The tide reminds me that we are not creatures of Earth; we are Earth’s creatures.

When I cross the border between land and sea, I will be free. I am a wanderer at heart, and will never stop moving or changing. This is the only promise I can give you, and you must cup it in your hands and keep it close to your heart, save it for a rainy day. We will all find our homes, one day.

Geese cry in the fog
Feathered steamboats bob listless
Herons watch from shore