This poem was written as a response to two things that happened on the same day--the first was the death of Philando Castile at the hands of Jeronimo Yanez, a Minnesota police officer. Philando's murder was just one of the many racially motivated crimes perpetrated by the American police system that year, and every year before it and every year since--but for some reason Philando's death hit me especially hard. Perhaps because it was so close to home. As I was grieving the continued violence against brown bodies in America, I happened to hear Allen Ginsberg's "America" on the radio. My grief turned to rage, and my rage into this poem.
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“Ha ha, fucking ha”
He laughs. Right,
It’s a punchline. I don’t quite get the joke
But maybe I’m just
Flaccid, waiting around for you again
You again, you again
You’re always popping up
Pop! A fucking weasel, that’s you and
On my birthday you wrote a condolence
Letter
But you didn’t dance with me—That Figures.
You poured me out into your palms
Rubbed me like silk between your fingers
You turned me over like a dollar in a candy store
Banknotes in the red and all of us on the
First of every month—Tangle town, cartoon faces
A zipline from here to there to Kalamazoo
I think of you, I think of you
Feeling blue again, but it ain’t my color
In a glass of milk I find myself sullen
Spoiled, sinking down like cookie crumbs
Into the mouth of some garish five year old
Know it all who thinks you can put a price
On this sort of feeling
But who taught him that?
Who taught Jimmy he could buy a feeling?
Was it you?
On my morning walk, a crack in the sidewalk
Roses red and violets blue, I think of you
I think of you—Do you ever think of me?
In your backless dress, in your prime rib?
Do you live inside this fuck, or do you live for it?
Do you love what I am, or am I what you love?
I can’t get a read—this is off the charts
A Guinness record, a Guinness, a Guinness
Bar close, get out
You can’t be here anymore
Taking up a stool, taking up a moment
A feeling
This space ain’t big enough for you
Irish Cowboys in your
Crooked coke bottle
John Wayne Gacy bobblehead bifocals
You’re scaring the children
Ginsberg rolls on the radio, droning, singing
“America, America,” the black girls blow out a birthday
Candle and the white boys dance and dance and dance
I don’t know this song, and I couldn’t get a rhythm anyhow
I tried to buy some once—they told me you could buy anything
They called me Jim Beam
They put a dollar in my fist and yanked open
The portcullis—the arena was New York
The lion was a wolf, Wall Street’s most infamous
Caricature—he gave me his autograph
I framed it with a baseball card
Baby Ruth bars, life on mars
I think of you, I think of you
Put on the news, watch them burn crosses
In black boy’s front yards—no not real crosses
This is a metaphor, don’t you understand a metaphor?
Don’t you understand it at all? The white faced ghosts in the night time
With their tanks and their bombs and their guns, this is a pop song
Have you heard this pop song?
Are you a big fan?
I cry in the tin foil alley
I sweat into my eyeballs
I fall into pins and needles, wading through piss
In the hopes of getting you on the telephone
When the foot falls out that other shoe
I think of you, I think of you
You darling head, you angel corrupt
The choirs sing his passing and you don’t know what it means
You threw out your plastic linings in the right can
You reused your ziplock bags, you don’t need to care
About this sort of thing, isn’t that right?
Isn’t it right, you don’t have to care any more
You’ve assuaged your guilt with television commercials
About unadoptable dogs and old people with new libidos
And you voted for the President. Good for you.
And even though the world is burning up and the sky
Is surely on fire and little children are dropping dead
In countries you can’t even pronounce the name of
And even though your streets are filled with the blood
Of the dead and the young whose backs broke bending over
To lay this Yellow Road brick by fucking brick
At least you remembered to dump a bucket over your
Pretty blonde head, and at least you save your coke cans
For a few extra nickels
Oh, tell me something, something true
I think of you, I think of you
When the junkies out on the boulevard
Get dope sick and fall like angels in the streets
And you call me from a payphone line, ask me
Do I like the Beats? We got the beat, baby
We got the beat
When the golden eggshells fall and the leaves
Turn slimy green
I’ll misremember your face, the feeling, the whole goddamned
Circus—which will inevitably catch fire, and as it burns down, down
And the sad clowns go swimming in the Hudson
And the weasel comes bursting back
Out my unshaven chest
I’ll think of you again, you again
You again
And we’ll share a Pabst
At my 4th of July picnic
And sing "America, the beautiful"
That's our song, isn't it, baby?
That's our song, our song,
Our song.
Knock Knock.
Aren’t we just so clever?
