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.

--

“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?