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 fuck 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 worthy¹ 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 machinery² 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 sinister³.

　　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 obsession⁴.

　　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 murder.

　　America I feel sentimental⁵ 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 perfectly⁶ right.

　　I won't say the Lord's Prayer.

　　I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations⁷.

　　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 obsessed⁸ 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 joints⁹ 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 Ford¹⁰ my strophes are as

　　individual as his automobiles¹² 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 auto¹¹ plants in Siberia.

　　Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-

　　tions.

　　That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.

　　Him need big black niggers. 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 lathes¹³

　　in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and

　　psychopathic anyway.

　　America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

 

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