Category: Poems

I got my first job at fourteen,
bagging groceries at the Winn-Dixie
on the corner of Sunset and 87th.
It wasn’t poetry,
though there was one old woman in a rusted blue car
with brown water sloshing around the trunk
who always gave me $3 when I carried out her groceries.
That was more than the chap in the Mercedes gave,
and I never forgot it.

Then, in ‘91 we moved to Clearwater, and I transferred
to the store at the corner of McMullen Booth and Enterprise.
I had a crush on the cashier who was a junior and pretty beyond my hopes,
but that didn’t stop me
from buying her ice cream all summer.

One day, there was loud music and a black sports car
driving too fast for the parking lot.
The thing miraculously jerked to a stop
just before hitting the car parked in front of it.
On the bumper was a sticker that said heaven doesn’t want me
and hell’s afraid I’ll take over,
and a man in black got out,
looked at me collecting shopping carts and said
gathering the silver buffalo, eh?
And then he walked away.
And then I saw myself beneath that sun
in my red vest, white shirt, and black tie,
and it all seemed absurd.

I was sixteen looking for sex and poetry
and instead finding Butterball turkeys

to be packed apart from the Drano
(I was, after all, a professional)
and be careful with those eggs, young man(!)
and boy, life doesn’t really care at all,
and it’ll totally suck for you, if you let it.

And I went back inside to the cold, stale air and fluorescent lights
and the manager said someone had dropped a jar of Ragu,
and I looked at this man, old as my father,
in his blue manager’s vest and I said I’ll keep this job
for as long as I need the money to pay for guitar lessons, but,
if I ever need this job for food,
I quit, I quit, I quit.

I criticize America
because I love America.
I am as hopeful as Thomas Paine. Over two hundred years later,
I still see a young country.
But I also see an indestructible country that is destroying itself
with ignorance.

I come from New Yorkers who came from Italians.
I come from New Yorkers, who came from Dominicans, who came from Spaniards.
I am America.

You, who come from Japan and China and Jamaica and Ghana and Iran and Haiti and Mexico, are America.
Arizonans and Texans, we are America, and so are you, do you understand?

Let’s own our history and say that what happened
to the Pikuni, Navajos, Hopi, Pueblos, Apsáalooke, and Seminoles is a travesty
(and they’re the lucky ones),
and they are America.

America is idea. It is not place. It is not culture. It is not looks.
America is happiness, even for the man who loves other men.
It is happiness for drunkards too, and orgyists too. That’s right.
It is not restricted to approved happinesses.
It is not only Super Bowl happiness, or graduation happiness.
It is not only happiness within the speed limit.
It is not only traditional happiness and happiness by accepted standards,
and happiness that would not shock the conscience of the suburbs
and those who farm.

I have known those who have climbed rocks in bare feet and bare-chested screamed at the night and learned nothing from that, America, nothing – except joy.
I have known those who have smoked pot and beyond pot.

I have known those who have scrumped in groups.

I have known those who love, really love, dodecaphonicism, America, they really do. And they hate your commercials.
Stop selling.

Deliver freedom instead. Realize your promise. After all this time,
answer Scott Key’s question with a yes,
and stop locking all those people up – more than any other nation on earth.
Stop the solitary confinement and the lethal injections – what a nightmare.

Stop spying.

Don’t tell me what a good American is. Don’t tell me that all Marines are heroes. Stop it with the heroes. Appreciate your real heroes. Hendrix. Whitman. Ginsberg. Thoreau.

It’s okay to have heroes that were black, or gay, or drug addicts, or pacifists, America. It’s okay. It’s the truth, stop running. I know your heroes, America. Don’t you tell me.

Put Fred Rogers on the five-dollar bill
for I do believe that he would have freed all the slaves.
(Put Philip Glass on the ten.)

Get over the idea of military tribunals. Stop avoiding yourself.
Stop worrying about convictions, and worry about justice.
Remember Yaser Hamdi?
I do.

I know what you did to Chief Osceola, and Sacco and Vanzetti,
and Dred Scott, and Fred Korematsu,
but I still love you because you are a beautiful promise.
Keep yourself, America. Don’t be afraid of Civil Disobedience.
Do not tame every wild thing.
Let the wolverine return to Michigan. The Everglades, America.
America, don’t you feel bad about the buffalo?

So this is you. East to West you conquered and civilized. Bridges span rivers.
The Eisenhower Interstate system. Marvelous. The Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate,
the Chicago River flows backwards. Wonderful accomplishments. Magnificent.

Are we free to be happy yet?