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God Bless America
now that Armageddon´s here
and that our valiant armies
traffic with dope
prosperously married to their self-
serving war on “drugs.”
God Bless America
where you get to smoke in jail
what they put you in jail for
while rapists wander in the streets
living out their fantasies in our own
backyards.
God Bless America
with all its good, native grown grass
--the one that’s made America fat
in more ways than one: “Better keep out,”
says Dole, “that scourge of humanity from south of
the Border --we grow our own in Kansas,
you know, so let´s all say No to the im-
ported stuff and may God Bless America!”.
That´s what the “free trade agreement” boils down to,
when all is said and done: keeping the price of our
“high yielding” crops up (if you´ll pardon the pun!)
while we get to dump on our neighbors
whatever we have no use for:
Who says we need any competition at all!
God Bless America where all it takes is six hun-
dred dollars a year to keep our heads high! About
as much as my root-canal before I get to pay for
the crown: so much for my insurance!
Even at twenty-six fifty-eight an hour, that´s
one week´s work, or twenty hours of
teaching, for one dentist´s two hours of sophisti-
cated technology! But,
God Bless America, now that Armageddon´s here
and that our venerable Chiefs of State (the Pre-si-
den-tes) have gathered in Chile, ceremoniously a-
dept, talking one kind of talk in private and
a very different kind right next to the Press.
They who bug us should be bugged
for the sake of the patrie, the home-turf,
here or abroad! Blessed not
The Pope who, as any Chief of State, is in aid and abet-
tance of crime, attempting to control beyond where it is
possible to impose the rules, and thus, bound to destroy
what human might seldom might create. God Bless
America, God, oh God, Howl! (echoes of brother
Ginsberg in our soul, howl: in our hole, Howl!).
So when, now, say when do I stop blessing A-
merica? Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for am-
ber waves of marihuana rolling across my beloved
Kansas, her sprightly sunflowers ever more ra-
diant under a gaze fired by the mysterious, ancient,
well-proven enhancer of our sensibilité (how
else would Baudelaire’s poème du haschish
ever have been!). God Bless
Kansas where once upon a time I played that I was
Dorothy and my own friends Toto, the Tin Man, the
Lion and the Scarecrow (I think I may have
been the Scarecrow as well...) and where, once upon
a time, brother coyotl “recabled my wires” (ever so gen-
tly pressed by my side) and put his mad-
ness in my heart to heal myself of certain mis-
perceptions regarding “straight” reality
--such as that “life” (in the abstract) may be considered
“sacred” while people (persons I mean) are reduced to get-
ing treated like things, God Bless America!
God Bless our teeth, so expensive-- our eyes, so dear:
Our skin cancers have cleared with some new oint-
ment no one would have guessed had the peculia-
rity of becoming addictive, like the Lotto and
so many other things:
like sex, or people (even right down to their unbearable abuse)
or coffee, leave alone nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, crack and a
growing list of promotionally prohibited cures for our
Despair
which, if true madness were not the rule of the “square” men-
tality, might at least accommodate nature’s proven ways,
but no...God bless!
History transmutes before our eyes into one single, long line of
faux pas: it will not remain nor be remembered
since only eternity can last; in a sense,
a whole world ends with each collapsing memory
and thus, the Alzheimer of history begins with our
historians’ “selectivity” and with records sud-
denly erased due to fire or a host of other natural or self-
inflicted disasters: a power shortage to obliterate
all memory of everything...
(Guess, just guess, what it was that Nixon discarded from
that tape! That we had helped Fidel
...remain?)
And then, who will care to remember
again, and again, and again
(lest you forget)
when there is all eternity gazing at us in the palm of our
hand (as per Blake, or Blake dixit).
Perhaps,
in another decade, if we´re still “on,” the Encarta --or
some other similar type of prefabricated record--
will display, under the expression “God Bless America”
an “option” composed of a few of these very long, wide
verses fished out from the stream of consciousness, or of Un-
consciousness, one passing Nov. 7, 1996, in Kendall, Mia-
mi, La Florida --at times like these a burning Hell be-
tween two waters, or is it three: even just seconds before it trans-
mutes into one perfectly radiant repository of
the green paradise of old, which never ends,
like the Poem never ends, simply --occasionally--
re-emerges from the deep waters of the
soul in its harness
of hope...
It will go down, no doubt (if
it goes down, or up) as a poème automatique unabashed-
ly surrealist (super-real) and, perhaps, it will even travel in
cyberspace as one luminous trail of 0s and 1s heltersker-
terly arranged: like a bullet to the eyes charged with some mys-
terious gift to heal...
(But who, at last, will care, in the rush of
words without trail or sense, even if such ramblings deserved
to be heard, again, in the imponderable, always ponderous,
brows of those who browse, and then, forget!).
God Bless America: The likelihood of a literate posterity in-
creasingly improbable or, if literate, overwhelmingly
stupefied by its own visions, voices, creations:
God and the imagination are one. Bless Wallace
Stevens who sold insurance and thrived as a
poet and otherwise... God Bless,
God Bless! Now that Armageddon suddenly reappears
as soon as you click on that mouse inside the little win-
dows that rule our lives: windows unto Armageddon as
seen from Paradise but, also, windows unto Para-
dise, from the heart of Armageddon:
God Bless America! God Bless the World!
The World of cheerful monks stuffing creamy meren-
gued pies under daunting, unapologetic girths; and,
at night, underneath the sotana,
a gun ready to fire away: the child abuser cheer-
fully feeding by day his third world acolyte
(only fifty percent of monks, they say, have preyed up-
on the altar of devilish possessions innocently posses-
sing the possessed... Amen!).
The word is game; the game’s
The Word to drop just at the right time.
God bless A-
merica and the World! God Bless the immigrants as
well! If we don’t want the “illegals,” once they’re legal,
will we love them all the same? If what we want is
they be “legal,” then let’s get rid of the “illegals” by
documenting them instead, God Bless... Rome did so
and suffered not the pain: the “barbarians” became
citizens and quite admirable in their day. As mem-
ber of the tribe of “legal immigrants” who became
citoyen,or citoyenne, I propose we eliminate the s-
tatus of alien and preserve the “alien” element in our
midst (who, pretty please, is to care for the abuela --and
the abuelo-- now that the only two daughters are working,
again, and the grandchildren few and scattered?). (The
Poem as political pamphlet again raises its head. It says:
The generation gap between North and South
requires to be considered when we begin to le-gis-
late, if it´s not too late, America: before our bles-
sings go totally to rot, and not only half way, in
the midst of our own little Armageddon growing so
big, so fat, so grotesque!
The Tower of Babel´s back: it’s called the Inter-
net, or is “Internet” merely the last prelude to the re-
enactment of Babel --or of Babble: of babble,
babble, babble, babble (Howl!...) in the midst of
The Persisting Mists of Memory.
God Bless America, with or without the Virgin Mary,
the whole world cradled in her arms, alter ego to every
María who has breast-fed her baby Jesus: María at dawn by
the ventana opening to the vast beyond while
Venus and the Moon whispered in her ear
ancient songs of wisdom, of a time before
the Fall: Blessed is the Virgencita de Guadalupe
and Blessed our beloved sister, mother, wife, and lover:
la Caridad del Cobre --Ochún-Yeyé-Cari: that Venus de Mi-
lo of our Afro-Cuban soul, copper and gold, luscious apples, man-
goes, peaches, incense at her feet; angel food wrapped in
honey, almonds drowned in chocolatl, yellow flowers,
candles, incense at her feet: Beauty,
Blessed Beauty reigns supreme!
God Bless America means God Bless Mexico, Gua-
temala, Honduras, El Salvador: Cuba with or without
Fidel, and all the Islands beyond: God Bless All of A-
merica, and all Americans, whatever flags they´re
born to pledge, let the name not separate:
God Bless the name that gathers us All -- God Bless
the Macarena (qué-cosa-buena). (The new Latin version of
auld lang syne?) May the two resound together in a multi-
lingual Congress able to make sense of that which
doesn´t in any language thus far spoken.
In cyberspace (will we soon abhor the place?) or Capitol Hill:
with windows connecting what is to be joined
and splitting what begs to be held separate. God Bless
The Press whenever it refuses to lie and risks getting slain:
It’s the druglord’s war on “drugs” that costs the
most: more than any other “price we pay for drugs”
to keep their price inflated. God Bless America,
where private sin is public virtue and public sin
the cause for so much private gain. Nobody wins,
not even the ones who think they have it made!
They die in body and they die in soul,
just as those who give themselves up to tell the
truth live on better once they’re dead; they change
only to improve and still win as they lose,
while those winning “favors” for lies promptly told
will lie at the bottom of the heap of remorse
that crowds the afterlife: losers winners,
winners losers. God Bless
The World, so fair, so fair: doubly fair --lovely and
just, now that Armageddon’s here and that our
clothes are torn, our teeth, our house, our home and
memories in the face of too much gone, swept a-
way from too many windows leading us straight to no-
where or to Babel--away from the garden beckon-
ing from our still quiet yard; let us pray --enjoy-- the moment
while it lasts: seize the day, carpe carpe carpe diem, lest we for-
get reality in favor of what is only “virtual” and not
any more real than the fat chance in a zillion that I´ll
win the Lottery or get around to transcribing these rumi-
nations beyond the page where Love once again Howls a-
way at the Moon pleading for justice, food: for Beauty,
food; for truth that’s also food; praying for
Food that heals and makes us full instead of food
that makes us ill and leaves us empty. Love
howling at the door, dancing at the door (even if it’s
not the Macarena...).
Only God is enough!
(¡Sólo Dios basta!)
Kendall, Nov. 11, 1996.
Set to type Dec. 7-10, revised 4-10-97
In honor of the Virgencita de Guadalupe,
Nuestra Madre, y de Ochún-Yeyé-Cari,
que es ella misma y nosotras también. And in memory of
Poet Ginsgberg, whose passing too has come to pass since
these turn of the millenium admonitions happened upon us.
Final revision, Detroit, Oct. 10, 2009. With belated thanks to
John Sinclair for my first REAL communion (May, 1965).