God Bless America

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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).