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PaulMoosberg

TogetherWeReAlone

There is no place or grace, for all the human race The race of will, to race and kill As anger fills and kills the thrill That we hold near and dear, we cherished children fear The wraith of God, the wraith of man The wraith of future shines the plan That we can maul it all, from front to back we saw The answer here, the answer there And never thought to question where Did anger’s state of hate, combined collaborate That one is right, and powering Then one will fight for might to sing The battle long of song, dividing right from wrong The death of you, the death of me The death of us for all to see No one can own this bone, together we’re alone

alone

RaviSathasivam

WhenIAmAlone

When I am alone, I think about you I think how much we are close to each other even we are far distance I think our love is in our hearts I think the good time we've shared together I think how important you are I think to share my ideas with you I think my last dance with you I think of my last kiss to you I think your love on me I think about you everyday and wanted to let you know I remember you when I am alone

alone

RaviSathasivam

WhenIWalkAlone

When I walk alone, I think of you my love When I walk alone, I walk with broken heart When I walk alone, I walk with sadness When I walk alone, I walk with my silent tears When I walk alone, I walk with my sorrow When I walk alone, I walk with my sad memories When I walk alone, I walk with my shattered dream When I walk alone, I walk with my hands lifeless Love never walk alone but you made me walk alone You promised me that you will walk with me forever but you made me walk alone with my tears forever When the heaven stolen you from me yesterday All your promises are gone with the wind Today, You made me walk alone with out you my love and I promise you, I will walk alone till my journey ends

alone

HABEEBURAHMANThaliyil

YouAloneILoveYoAloneIWorship

You alone I love, you alone I worship. [Poem] Until I die my breath will guard you, And my memories after. In my death none I like to weep for me, If you shed a dropp of tear, I will sprout again from the mud. To love you to guard you to serve you. I am born to love you alone And I will die for your love too. In the world here after, I will love, love you alone. What else shall I say when my love for you is full? What shall I think but you when you are the truth. I will but love you, Let them stone at me. You alone I love, you alone I worship. I m made to sing your melodies, care not the world hear or not. Until I die my breath will guard you, And my memories after. In my death none I like to weep for me, If you shed a dropp of tear, I will sprout again from the mud. To love you to guard you to serve you.

alone

Pdishere

ZzzzzAlone

Will a friend fly here Among the gulls that glide and cry, And erase all the mortification Just to end this life's taxation? Will a friend float here Among the waves that rise and fall, And break upon the rocks To shatter lies that stand tall? Will a friend walk here Among the numerous passerbys And fight for my rights On all the days and nights? Will a friend swim here Among the sharks that create terror and fear With strength and courage Just to save my jagged life? Or will I sit and sob Among the winds that swirl and twirl Only to unfurl A life with beauty all around But no human support to surround. Does that mean all I can do is moan and groan And nevertheless be on my own - ALL ALONE? - (Written when in Std Xii)

alone

premjipremji

056America

Waxing Bodies, Waning Minds, Dried up Souls, Ha...America!

america

cheungshunsang

111ChinaSectionEightAsAmericaByCauchy3

China- section- eight as America! China section eight is army home. All committed are ill at houses to whom. Views on ways are all as congress conga. Leaders’ cons are all to make the crones. Female sheep the herbs are sexes to eat. Lucks at guesses are all for going at. Sheep in males will drink the shower gold. Shoulder come and bloods are both so cold. Clouds to teach are Maoism giving girl. Snows and winds are met but wrong with YMIR. Lands of young have Maoism mad and old. YOICKS my hounds will get the Maoism wolves. ---Cheung Shun Sang=Cauchy3---

america

RajaramRamachandran

44VivekanandaReligionInAmerica

Freedom, equality and justice Had been the most valuable treasures Cherished in the American hearts And were the basis of their politics. Religion also played its vital role, Well among the American people, But more than the spiritual progress, Material value occupied the first place. The reason was, the tremendous Progress in technology and science, That increased their prospects Besides their rich life styles. To give America a religious flavor, Efforts were made thereafter. As in the Parliament of Religion, A forum to study all religions. This forum gave a chance For every religion to place Their best religious practices Before the learned audience. Vivekananda scored high marks In this evaluation process To the credit of the Hindus, With his thundering lectures. He kept America in high esteem For having extended this forum To all the world religions In the name of Parliament of Religions. This forum proved that the success Of technology and science Responsible for material prosperity, Couldn’t destroy any spiritual activity. The result was, a closer contact Between the East and the West On the material platform As well as in the spiritual forum. In the eyes of America The prestige of India Shot up by leaps and bounds Only after Swamiji’s lectures.

america

SandraOsborne

AmericaLivesWrittenAtAge14

America lives, For you and for me, With all she can give, On land and on sea. She has a grand flag of red white and blue, She has her storms her droughts and her showers She isn’t very old, in fact she’s quite new, She’s even one of the world great powers. We have been in many wars, yes so many, Yet all through this America thrives, Then in the end, we can give not a penny, Yet we fight on and give up our lives. Our lives that we love so dear, we give, Just so that our great country, America, Can, and does live.

america

RaulLuna

AngelOfLove

Who cut your wings my angel? Who destroyed your dreams today? Who kneeled you down to humiliate you? And who put your soul in a cage? Let me cure you love Let me give you my love Angel of love don't fall down Don't abandon yourself Who tied your arms, tied your wish? Who killed your smile, killed your life? Who bled your lips and your creed? Why did you let it happen angel of love? Angel of love Open your wings and let your dreams fly Let me cure you love I'll give you all my love Angel of love please don't fall again

angel

PhillisWheatley

AFarewellToAmericaToMrsSW

I. ADIEU, New-England's smiling meads, Adieu, the flow'ry plain: I leave thine op'ning charms, O spring, And tempt the roaring main. II. In vain for me the flow'rets rise, And boast their gaudy pride, While here beneath the northern skies I mourn for health deny'd. III. Celestial maid of rosy hue, O let me feel thy reign! I languish till thy face I view, Thy vanish'd joys regain. IV. Susanna mourns, nor can I bear To see the crystal show'r, Or mark the tender falling tear At sad departure's hour; V. Not unregarding can I see Her soul with grief opprest: But let no sighs, no groans for me, Steal from her pensive breast. VI. In vain the feather'd warblers sing, In vain the garden blooms, And on the bosom of the spring Breathes out her sweet perfumes. VII. While for Britannia's distant shore We sweep the liquid plain, And with astonish'd eyes explore The wide-extended main. VIII. Lo! Health appears! celestial dame! Complacent and serene, With Hebe's mantle o'er her Frame, With soul-delighting mein. IX. To mark the vale where London lies With misty vapours crown'd, Which cloud Aurora's thousand dyes, And veil her charms around. X. Why, Phoebus, moves thy car so slow? So slow thy rising ray? Give us the famous town to view, Thou glorious king of day! XI. For thee, Britannia, I resign New-England's smiling fields; To view again her charms divine, What joy the prospect yields! XII. But thou! Temptation hence away, With all thy fatal train, Nor once seduce my soul away, By thine enchanting strain. XIII. Thrice happy they, whose heav'nly shield Secures their souls from harms, And fell Temptation on the field Of all its pow'r disarms!

america

AlanSeeger

AMessageToAmerica

You have the grit and the guts, I know; You are ready to answer blow for blow You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard, But your honor ends with your own back-yard; Each man intent on his private goal, You have no feeling for the whole; What singly none would tolerate You let unpunished hit the state, Unmindful that each man must share The stain he lets his country wear, And (what no traveller ignores) That her good name is often yours. You are proud in the pride that feels its might; From your imaginary height Men of another race or hue Are men of a lesser breed to you: The neighbor at your southern gate You treat with the scorn that has bred his hate. To lend a spice to your disrespect You call him the "greaser". But reflect! The greaser has spat on you more than once; He has handed you multiple affronts; He has robbed you, banished you, burned and killed; He has gone untrounced for the blood he spilled; He has jeering used for his bootblack's rag The stars and stripes of the gringo's flag; And you, in the depths of your easy-chair -- What did you do, what did you care? Did you find the season too cold and damp To change the counter for the camp? Were you frightened by fevers in Mexico? I can't imagine, but this I know -- You are impassioned vastly more By the news of the daily baseball score Than to hear that a dozen countrymen Have perished somewhere in Darien, That greasers have taken their innocent lives And robbed their holdings and raped their wives. Not by rough tongues and ready fists Can you hope to jilt in the modern lists. The armies of a littler folk Shall pass you under the victor's yoke, Sobeit a nation that trains her sons To ride their horses and point their guns -- Sobeit a people that comprehends The limit where private pleasure ends And where their public dues begin, A people made strong by discipline Who are willing to give -- what you've no mind to -- And understand -- what you are blind to -- The things that the individual Must sacrifice for the good of all. You have a leader who knows -- the man Most fit to be called American, A prophet that once in generations Is given to point to erring nations Brighter ideals toward which to press And lead them out of the wilderness. Will you turn your back on him once again? Will you give the tiller once more to men Who have made your country the laughing-stock For the older peoples to scorn and mock, Who would make you servile, despised, and weak, A country that turns the other cheek, Who care not how bravely your flag may float, Who answer an insult with a note, Whose way is the easy way in all, And, seeing that polished arms appal Their marrow of milk-fed pacifist, Would tell you menace does not exist? Are these, in the world's great parliament, The men you would choose to represent Your honor, your manhood, and your pride, And the virtues your fathers dignified? Oh, bury them deeper than the sea In universal obloquy; Forget the ground where they lie, or write For epitaph: "Too proud to fight." I have been too long from my country's shores To reckon what state of mind is yours, But as for myself I know right well I would go through fire and shot and shell And face new perils and make my bed In new privations, if ROOSEVELT led; But I have given my heart and hand To serve, in serving another land, Ideals kept bright that with you are dim; Here men can thrill to their country's hymn, For the passion that wells in the Marseillaise Is the same that fires the French these days, And, when the flag that they love goes by, With swelling bosom and moistened eye They can look, for they know that it floats there still By the might of their hands and the strength of their will, And through perils countless and trials unknown Its honor each man has made his own. They wanted the war no more than you, But they saw how the certain menace grew, And they gave two years of their youth or three The more to insure their liberty When the wrath of rifles and pennoned spears Should roll like a flood on their wrecked frontiers. They wanted the war no more than you, But when the dreadful summons blew And the time to settle the quarrel came They sprang to their guns, each man was game; And mark if they fight not to the last For their hearths, their altars, and their past: Yea, fight till their veins have been bled dry For love of the country that WILL not die. O friends, in your fortunate present ease (Yet faced by the self-same facts as these), If you would see how a race can soar That has no love, but no fear, of war, How each can turn from his private role That all may act as a perfect whole, How men can live up to the place they claim And a nation, jealous of its good name, Be true to its proud inheritance, Oh, look over here and learn from FRANCE!

america

HughHenryBrackenridge

APoemOnTheRisingGloryOfAmerica

LEANDER. No more of Memphis and her mighty kings, Or Alexandria, where the Ptolomies. Taught golden commerce to unfurl her falls, And bid fair science smile: No more of Greece Where learning next her early visit paid, And spread her glories to illume the world, No more of Athens, where she flourished, And saw her sons of mighty genius rise Smooth flowing Plato, Socrates and him Who with resistless eloquence reviv'd The Spir't of Liberty, and shook the thrones Of Macedon and Persia's haughty king. No more of Rome enlighten'd by her beams, Fresh kindling there the fire of eloquence, And poesy divine; imperial Rome! Whose wide dominion reach'd o'er half the globe; Whose eagle flew o'er Ganges to the East, And in the West far to the British isles. No more of Britain, and her kings renown'd, Edward's and Henry's thunderbolts of war; Her chiefs victorious o'er the Gallic foe; Illustrious senators, immortal bards, And wise philosophers, of these no more. A Theme more new, tho' not less noble claims Our ev'ry thought on this auspicious day The rising glory of this western world, Where now the dawning light of science spreads Her orient ray, and wakes the muse's song; Where freedom holds her sacred standard high, And commerce rolls her golden tides profuse Of elegance and ev'ry joy of life. ACASTO. Since then Leander you attempt a strain So new, so noble and so full of fame; And since a friendly concourse centers here America's own sons, begin O muse! Now thro' the veil of ancient days review The period fam'd when first Columbus touch'd The shore so long unknown, thro' various toils, Famine and death, the hero made his way, Thro' oceans bestowing with eternal storms. But why, thus hap'ly found, should we resume The tale of Cortez, furious chief, ordain'd With Indian blood to dye the sands, and choak Fam'd Amazonia's stream with dead! Or why, Once more revive the story old in fame, Of Atabilipa by thirst of gold Depriv'd of life: which not Peru's rich ore, Nor Mexico's vast mines cou'd then redeem. Better these northern realms deserve our song, Discover'd by Britannia for her sons; Undeluged with seas of Indian blood, Which cruel Spain on southern regions spilt; To gain by terrors what the gen'rous breast Wins by fair treaty, conquers without blood. EUGENIO. High in renown th' intreprid hero stands, From Europes shores advent'ring first to try New seas, new oceans, unexplor'd by man. Fam'd Cabot too may claim our noblest song, Who from th' Atlantic surge descry'd these shores, As on he coasted from the Mexic bay To Acady and piny Labradore. Nor less than him the muse would celebrate Bold Hudson stemming to the pole, thro' seas Vex'd with continual storms, thro' the cold strains, Where Europe and America oppose Their shores contiguous, and the northern sea Confin'd, indignant, swells and roars between. With these be number'd in the list of fame Illustrious Raleigh, hapless in his fate: Forgive me Raleigh, if an infant muse Borrows thy name to grace her humble strain; By many nobler are thy virtues sung; Envy no more shall throw them in the shade; They pour new lustre on Britannia's isle. Thou too, advent'rous on th' Atlantic main, Burst thro' its storms and fair Virginia hail'd. The simple natives saw thy canvas flow, And gaz'd aloof upon the shady shore: For in her woods America contain'd, From times remote, a savage race of men. How shall we know their origin, how tell, From whence or where the Indian tribes arose? ACASTO. And long has this defy'd the sages skill T' investigate: Tradition seems to hide The mighty secret from each mortal eye, How first these various nations South and North Possest these shores, or from what countries came. Whether they sprang from some premoeval head In their own lands, like Adam in the East; Yet this the sacred oracles deny, And reason too reclaims against the thought. For when the gen'ral deluge drown'd the world, Where could their tribes have found security? Where find their fate but in the ghastly deep? Unless, as others dream, some chosen few High on the Andes 'scap'd the gen'ral death, High on the Andes wrapt in endless snow, Where winter in his wildest fury reigns. But here Philosophers oppose the scheme, The earth, say they, nor hills nor mountains knew E'er yet the universal flood prevail'd: But when the mighty waters rose aloft Rous'd by the winds, they shook their solid case And in convulsions tore the drowned world! 'Till by the winds assuag'd they quickly fell And all their ragged bed exposed to view. Perhaps far wand'ring towards the northren pole, The straits of Zembla and the Frozen Zone, And where the eastern Greenland almost joins America's north point, the hardy tribes Of banish'd Jews, Siberians, Tartars wild Came over icy mountains, or on floats First reach'd these coasts hid from the world beside. And yet another argument more strange Reserv'd for men of deeper thought and late Presents itself to view: In Pelag's days, So says the Hebrew seer's inspired pen, This mighty mass of earth, this solid globe Was cleft in twain--cleft east and west apart While strait between the deep Atlantic roll'd. And traces indisputable remain Of this unhappy land now sunk and lost; The islands rising in the eastern main Are but small fragments of this continent, Whose two extremities were Newfoudland And St. Helena.--One far in the north Where British seamen now with strange surprise Behold the pole star glitt'ring o'er their heads; The other in the southern tropic rears Its head above the waves; Bermudas and Canary isles, Britannia and th' Azores, With fam'd Hibernia are but broken parts Of some prodigious waste which once sustain'd Armies by lands, where now but ships can range. LEANDER. Your sophistry Acasto makes me smile; The roving mind of man delights to dwell On hidden things, merely because they're hid; He thinks his knowledge ne'er can reach too high And boldly pierces nature's inmost haunts But for uncertainties; your broken isles, You northern Tartars, and your wand'ring Jews. Hear what the voice of history proclaims. The Carthaginians, e'er the Roman yoke Broke their proud spirits and enslav'd them too, For navigation were renown'd as much As haughty Tyre with all her hundred fleets; Full many: league their vent'rous seamen sail'd Thro' strait Gibraltar down the western shore Of Africa, and to Canary isles By them call'd fortunate, so Flaccus sings, Because eternal spring there crowns the fields, And fruits delicious bloom throughout the year. From voyaging here this inference I draw, Perhaps some barque with all her num'rous crew Caught by the eastern trade wind hurry'd on Before th' steady blast to Brazil's shore, New Amazonia and the coasts more south. Here standing and unable to return, For ever from their native skies estrang'd, Doubtless they made the unknown land their own. And in the course of many rolling years A num'rous progeny from these arose, And spread throughout the coasts; those whom we call Brazilians, Mexicans, Peruvians rich, Th' tribes of Chili, Paragon and those Who till the shores of Amazon's long stream. When first the pow'rs of Europe here attain'd Vast empires, kingdoms, cities, palaces And polish'd nations stock'd the fertile land. Who has not heard of Cusco, Lima and The town of Mexico; huge cities form'd From Europe's architecture, e're the arms Of haughty Spain disturb'd the peaceful soil. EUGENIO. Such disquisition leads the puzzled mind From maze to maze by queries still perplex'd. But this we know, if from the east they came Where science first and revelation beam'd, Long since they've lost all memory, all trace Of this their origin: Tradition tells Of some great forefather beyond the lakes Oswego, Huron, Mechigan, Champlaine Or by the stream of Amazon which rolls Thro' many a clime; while others simply dream That from the Andes or the mountains north, Some hoary fabled ancestor came down To people this their world. LEANDER. How fallen, Oh! How much obscur'd is human nature here! Shut from the light of science and of truth They wander'd blindfold down the steep of time; Dim superstition with her ghastly train Of dæmons, spectres and forboding signs Still urging them to horrid rites and forms Of human sacrifice, to sooth the pow'rs Malignant, and the dark infernal king. Once on this spot perhaps a wigwam stood With all its rude inhabitants, or round Some mighty fire an hundred savage sons Gambol'd by day, and filled the night with cries; In what superior to the brutal race That fled before them thro' the howling wilds, Were all those num'rous tawny tribes which swarm'd From Baffin's bay to Del Fuego south, From California to the Oronoque. Far from the reach of fame they liv'd unknown In listless slumber and inglorious ease; To them fair science never op'd her stores, Nor sacred truth sublim'd the soul to God; No fix'd abode their wand'ring genius knew; No golden harvest crown'd the fertile glebe; No city then adorn'd the rivers bank, Nor rising turret overlook'd the stream. ACASTO. Now view the prospect chang'd; far off at sea The mariner descry's our spacious towns He hails the prospect of the land and views A new, a fair a fertile world arise; Onward from India's isles far east, to us Now fair-ey'd commerce stretches her white sails, Learning exalts her head, the graces smile And peace establish'd after horrid war Improves the splendor of these early times. But come my friends and let us trace the steps By which this recent happy world arose, To this fair eminence of high renown This height of wealth, of liberty and fame. LEANDER. Speak then Eugenio, for I've heard you tell The pleasing hist'ry, and the cause that brought The first advent'rers to these happy shores; The glorious cause that urg'd our fathers first To visit climes unknown and wilder woods Than e'er Tartarian or Norwegian saw, And with fair culture to adorn that soil Which never knew th' industrious swain before. EUGENIO. All this long story to rehearse would tire, Besides the sun toward the west retreats, Nor can the noblest tale retard his speed, Nor loftiest verse; not that which sung the fall Of Troy divine and smooth Scamander's stream. Yet hear a part.--By persecution wrong'd And popish cruelty, our fathers came From Europe's shores to find this blest abode, Secure from tyranny and hateful man. For this they left their country and their friends And plough'd th' Atlantic wave in quest of peace; And found new shores and sylvan settlements Form'd by the care of each advent'rous chief, Who, warm in liberty and freedom's cause, Sought out uncultivated tracts and wilds, And fram'd new plans of cities, governments And spacious provinces: Why should I name Thee Penn, the Solon of our western lands; Sagacious legislator, whom the world Admires tho' dead: an infant colony Nurs'd by thy care, now rises o'er the rest Like that tall Pyramid on Memphis' stand O'er all the lesser piles, they also great. Why should I name those heroes so well known Who peopled all the rest from Canada To Georgia's farthest coasts, West Florida Or Apalachian mountains, yet what streams Of blood were shed! What Indian hosts were slain Before the days of peace were quite restor'd. LEANDER. Yes, while they overturn'd the soil untill'd, And swept the forests from the shaded plain 'Midst dangers, foes and death, fierce Indian tribes With deadly malice arm'd and black design, Oft murder'd half the hapless colonies. Encourag'd too by that inglorious race False Gallia's sons, who once their arms display'd At Quebec, Montreal and farthest coasts Of Labrador and Esquimaux where now The British standard awes the coward host. Here those brave chiefs, who lavish of their blood Fought in Britannia's cause, most nobly fell. What Heart but mourns the untimely fate of Wolf, Who dying conquer'd, or what breast but beats To share a fate like his, and die like him? ACASTO. And he demands our lay who bravely fell By Monangahela and the Ohio's stream; By wiles o'ercome the hapless hero fell, His soul too gen'rous, for that dastard crew Who kill unseen and shun the face of day. Ambush'd in wood, and swamp and thick grown hill, The bellowing tribes brought on the savage war. What could avail O Braddock then the flame, The gen'rous flame which fir'd thy martial soul! What could avail Britannia's warlike troops, Choice spirits of her isle? What could avail America's own sons? The skulking foe, Hid in the forest lay and sought secure, What could the brave Virginians do o'erpower'd By such vast numbers and their leader dead? 'Midst fire and death they bore him from the field, Where in his blood full many a hero lay. 'Twas there O Halkut! thou so nobly fell, Thrice valiant Halkut early son of fame! We still deplore a fate so immature, Fair Albion mourns thy unsuccesful end, And Caledonia sheds a tear for him Who led the bravest of her sons to war. EUGENIO. But why alas commemorate the dead? And pass those glorious heroes by, who yet Breathe the same air and see the light with us? The dead, Acasto are but empty names And he who dy'd to day the same to us As he who dy'd a thousand years ago. A Johnson lives, among the sons of same Well known, conspicuous as the morning star Among the lesser lights: A patriot skill'd In all the glorious arts of peace of war. He for Britannia gains the savage race, Unstable as the sea, wild as the winds, Cruel as death, and treacherous as hell, Whom none but he by kindness yet could win, None by humanity could gain their souls, Or bring from woods and subteranean dens The skulking crew, before a Johnson rose, Pitying their num'rous tribes: ah how unlike The Cortez' and Acosta's, pride of Spain Whom blood and murder only satisfy'd. Behold their doleful regions overflow'd With gore, and blacken'd with ten thousand deaths From Mexico to Patagonia far, Where howling winds sweep round the southern cape, And other suns and other stars arise! ACASTO. Such is the curse Eugenio where the soul Humane is wanting, but we boast no seats Of cruelty like Spain's unfeeling sons. The British Epithet is merciful: And we the sons of Britain learn like them To conquer and to spare; for coward souls Seek their revenge but on a vanquish'd foe. Gold, fatal gold was the assuring bait To Spain's rapacious mind, hence rose the wars From Chili to the Caribbean sea, O'er Terra-Firma and La Plata wide. Peru then sunk in ruins, great before With pompous cities, monuments superb Whose tops reach'd heav'n. But we more happy boast No golden metals in our peaceful land, No flaming diamond, precious emerald, Or blushing saphire, ruby, chrysolite Or jasper red; more noble riches flow From agriculture and th' industrious swain, Who tills the fertile vale or mountain's brow, Content to lead a safe, a humble life 'Midst his own native hills; romantic scenes, Such as the muse of Greece did feign so well, Envying their lovely bow'rs to mortal race. LEANDER. Long has the rural life been justly fam'd; And poets old their pleasing pictures drew Of flow'ry meads, and groves and gliding streams. Hence old Arcadia, woodnymphs, satyrs, fauns, And hence Elysium, fancy'd heav'n below. Fair agriculture, not unworthy kings, Once exercis'd the royal hand, or those Whose virtue rais'd them to the rank of gods. See old Laertes in his shepherd weeds, Far from his pompous throne and court august, Digging the grateful soil, where peaceful blows The west wind murm'ring thro' the aged trees Loaded with apples red, sweet scented peach And each luxurious fruit the world affords, While o'er the fields the harmless oxen draw Th' industrious plough. The Roman heroes too Fabricius and Camillus lov'd a life Of sweet simplicity and rustic joy; And from the busy Forum hast'ning far, 'Midst woods and fields spent the remains of age. How grateful to behold the harvests rise And mighty crops adorn the golden plains? Fair plenty smiles throughout, while lowing herds Stalk o'er the grassy hill or level mead, Or at some winding river slake their thirst. Thus fares the rustic swain; and when the winds Blow with a keener breath, and from the North Pour all their tempests thro' a sunless sky, Ice, sleet and rattling hail, secure he sits In some thatch'd cottage fearless of the storm; While on the hearth a fire still blazing high Chears every mind, and nature fits serene On ev'ry countenance, such the joys And such the fate of those whom heav'n hath bless'd With souls enamour'd of a country life. EUGENIO. Much wealth and pleasure agriculture brings; Far in the woods she raises palaces, Puisant states and crowded realms where late A desart plain or frowning wilderness Deform'd the view; or where with moving tents The scatter'd nations seeking pasturage, Wander'd from clime to clime incultivate; Or where a race more savage yet than these, In search of prey o'er hill and mountain rang'd, Fierce as the tygers and the wolves they flew. Thus lives th' Arabian and the Tartar wild In woody wastes which never felt the plough; But agriculture crowns our happy land, And plants our colonies from north to south, From Cape Breton far as the Mexic bay From th' Eastern shores to Missisippi's stream. Famine to us unknown, rich plenty reigns And pours her blessings with a lavish hand. LEANDER. Nor less from golden commerce flow the streams Of richest plenty on our smiling land. Now fierce Bellona must'ring all her rage, To other climes and other seas withdraws, To rouse the Russian on the desp'rate Turk There to conflict by Danube and the straits Which join the Euxine to th' Egean Sea. Britannia holds the empire of the waves, And welcomes ev'ry bold adventurer To view the wonders of old Ocean's reign. Far to the east our fleets on traffic sail, And to the west thro' boundless seas which not Old Rome nor Tyre nor mightier Carthage knew. Daughter of commerce, from the hoary deep New-York emerging rears her lofty domes, And hails from far her num'rous ships of trade, Like shady forests rising on the waves. From Europe's shores or from the Caribbees, Homeward returning annually they bring The richest produce of the various climes. And Philadelphia mistress of our world, The seat of arts, of science, and of fame Derives her grandeur from the pow'r of trade. Hail happy city where the muses stray, Where deep philosophy convenes her sons And opens all her secrets to their view! Bids them ascend with Newton to the skies, And trace the orbits of the rolling spheres, Survey the glories of the universe, Its suns and moons and ever blazing stars! Hail city blest with liberty's fair beams, And with the rays of mild religion blest! ACASTO. Nor these alone, America, thy sons In the short circle of a hundred years Have rais'd with toil along thy shady shores. On lake and bay and navigable stream, From Cape Breton to Pensacola south, Unnumber'd towns and villages arise, By commerce nurs'd these embrio marts of trade May yet awake the envy and obscure The noblest cities of the eastern world; For commerce is the mighty reservoir From whence all nations draw the streams of gain. 'Tis commerce joins dissever'd worlds in one, Confines old Ocean to more narrow bounds; Outbraves his storms and peoples half his world. EUGENIO. And from the earliest times advent'rous man On foreign traffic stretch'd the nimble sail; Or sent the slow pac'd caravan afar O'er barren wastes, eternal sands where not The blissful haunt of human form is seen Nor tree not ev'n funeral cypress sad Nor bubbling fountain. Thus arriv'd of old Golconda's golden ore, and thus the wealth Of Ophir to the wisest of mankind. LEANDER. Great is the praise of commerce, and the men Deserve our praise who spread from shore to shore The flowing fall; great are their dangers too; Death ever present to the fearless eye And ev'ry billow but a gaping grave; Yet all these mighty feats to science owe Their rise and glory.--Hail fair science! thou Transplanted from the eastern climes dost bloom In these fair regions, Greece and Rome no more Detain the muses on Cithæron's brow, Or old Olympus crown'd with waving woods; Or Hæmus' top where once was heard the harp, Sweet Orpheus' harp that ravish'd hell below And pierc'd the soul of Orcus and his bride, That hush'd to silence by the song divine Thy melancholy waters, and the gales O Hebrus! which o'er thy sad surface blow. No more the maids round Alpheus' waters stray Where he with Arethusas' stream doth mix, Or where swift Tiber disembogues his waves Into th' Italian sea so long unsung. Hither they've wing'd their way, the last, the best Of countries where the arts shall rise and grow Luxuriant, graceful; and ev'n now we boast A Franklin skill'd in deep philosophy, A genius piercing as th' electric fire, Bright as the light'nings flash explain'd so well By him the rival of Britannia's sage. This is a land of ev'ry joyous sound Of liberty and life; sweet liberty! Without whose aid the noblest genius fails, And science irretrievably must die. ACASTO. This is a land where the more noble light Of holy revelation beams, the star Which rose from Judah lights our skies, we feel Its influence as once did Palestine And Gentile lands, where now the ruthless Turk Wrapt up in darkness sleeps dull life away. Here many holy messengers of peace As burning lamps have given light to men. To thee, O Whitefield! favourite of Heav'n, The muse would pay the tribute of a tear. Laid in the dust thy eloquence no more Shall charm the list'ning soul, no more Thy bold imagination paint the scenes Of woe and horror in the shades below; Or glory radiant in the fields above; No more thy charity relieve the poor; Let Georgia mourn, let all her orphans weep. LEANDER. Yet tho' we wish'd him longer from the skies, And wept to see the ev'ning of his days, He long'd himself to reach his final hope, The crown of glory for the just prepar'd. From life's high verge he hail'd th' eternal shore And, freed at last from his confinement, rose An infant seraph to the worlds on high. EUGENIO. For him we sound the melancholy lyre, The lyre responsive to each distant sigh; No grief like that which mourns departing souls Of holy, just and venerable men, Whom pitying Heav'n sends from their native skies To light our way and bring us nearer God. But come Leander since we know the past And present glory of this empire wide, What hinders to pervade with searching eye The mystic scenes of dark futurity? Say shall we ask what empires yet must rise What kingdoms pow'rs and states where now are seen But dreary wastes and awful solitude, Where melancholy sits with eye forlorn And hopes the day when Britain's sons shall spread Dominion to the north and south and west Far from th' Atlantic to Pacific shores? A glorious theme, but how shall mortals dare To pierce the mysteries of future days, And scenes unravel only known to fate. ACASTO. This might we do if warm'd by that bright coal Snatch'd from the altar of seraphic fire, Which touch'd Isaiah's lips, or if the spirit Of Jeremy and Amos, prophets old, Should fire the breast; but yet I call the muse And what we can will do. I see, I see A thousand kingdoms rais'd, cities and men Num'rous as sand upon the ocean shore; Th' Ohio then shall glide by many a town Of note: and where the Missisippi stream By forests shaded now runs weeping on Nations shall grow and states not less in fame Than Greece and Rome of old: we too shall boast Our Alexanders, Pompeys, heroes, kings That in the womb of time yet dormant lye Waiting the joyful hour for life and light. O snatch us hence, ye muses! to those days When, through the veil of dark antiquity, Our sons shall hear of us as things remote, That blossom'd in the morn of days, alas! How could I weep that we were born so soon, In the beginning of more happy times! But yet perhaps our fame shall last unhurt. The sons of science nobly scorn to die Immortal virtue this denies, the muse Forbids the men to slumber in the grave Who well deserve the praise that virtue gives. EUGENIO. 'Tis true no human eye can penetrate The veil obscure, and in fair light disclos'd Behold the scenes of dark futurity; Yet if we reason from the course of things, And downward trace the vestiges of time, The mind prophetic grows and pierces far Thro' ages yet unborn. We saw the states And mighty empires of the East arise In swift succession from the Assyrian To Macedon and Rome; to Britain thence Dominion drove her car, she stretch'd her reign Oer many isles, wide seas, and peopled lands. Now in the West a continent appears; A newer world now opens to her view; She hastens onward to th' Americ shores And bids a scene of recent wonders rise. New states new empires and a line of kings, High rais'd in glory, cities, palaces Fair domes on each long bay, sea, shore or stream Circling the hills now rear their lofty heads. Far in the Arctic skies a Petersburgh, A Bergen, or Archangel lifts its spires Glitt'ring with Ice, far in the West appears A new Palmyra or an Ecbatan, And sees the slow pac'd caravan return O'er many a realm from the Pacific shore, Where fleets shall then convey rich Persia's silks, Arabia's perfumes, and spices rare Of Philippine, Coelebe and Marian isles, Or from the Acapulco coast our India then, Laden with pearl and burning gems and gold. Far in the South I see a Babylon, As once by Tigris or Euphrates stream, With blazing watch towr's and observatories Rising to heav'n; from thence astronomers With optic glass take nobler views of God In golden suns and shining worlds display'd Than the poor Chaldean with the naked eye. A Niniveh where Oronoque descends With waves discolour'd from the Andes high, Winding himself around a hundred isles Where golden buildings glitter o'er his tide. To mighty nations shall the people grow Which cultivate the banks of many a flood, In chrystal currents poured from the hills Apalachia nam'd, to lave the sands Of Carolina, Georgia, and the plains Stretch'd out from thence far to the burning Line, St Johns or Clarendon or Albemarle. And thou Patowmack navigable stream, Rolling thy waters thro' Virginia's groves, Shall vie with Thames, the Tiber or the Rhine, For on thy banks I see an hundred towns And the tall vessels wafted down thy tide. Hoarse Niagara's stream now roaring on Thro' woods and rocks and broken mountains torn, In days remote far from their antient beds, By some great monarch taught a better course, Or cleared of cataracts shall flow beneath Unnumbr'd boats and merchandize and men; And from the coasts of piny Labradore, A thousand navies crowd before the gale, And spread their commerce to remotest lands, Or bear their thunder round the conquered world. LEANDER. And here fair freedom shall forever reign. I see a train, a glorious train appear, Of Patriots plac'd in equal fame with those Who nobly fell for Athens or for Rome. The sons of Boston resolute and brave The firm supporters of our injur'd rights, Shall lose their splendours in the brighter beams Of patriots fam'd and heroes yet unborn. ACASTO. 'Tis but the morning of the world with us And Science yet but sheds her orient rays. I see the age the happy age roll on Bright with the splendours of her mid-day beams, I see a Homer and a Milton rise In all the pomp and majesty of song, Which gives immortal vigour to the deeds Atchiev'd by Heroes in the fields of fame. A second Pope, like that Arabian bird Of which no age can boast but one, may yet Awake the muse by Schuylkill's silent stream, And bid new forests bloom along her tide. And Susquehanna's rocky stream unsung, In bright meanders winding round the hills, Where first the mountain nymph sweet echo heard The uncouth musick of my rural lay, Shall yet remurmur to the magic sound Of song heroic, when in future days Some noble Hambden rises into fame. LEANDER. Or Roanoke's and James's limpid waves The sound of musick murmurs in the gale; Another Denham celebrates their flow, In gliding numbers and harmonious lays. EUGENIO. Now in the bow'rs of Tuscororah hills, As once on Pindus all the muses stray, New Theban bards high soaring reach the skies And swim along thro' azure deeps of air. LEANDER. From Alleghany in thick groves imbrown'd, Sweet music breathing thro' the shades of night Steals on my ear, they sing the origin Of those fair lights which gild the firmament; From whence the gale that murmurs in the pines; Why flows the stream down from the mountains brow And rolls the ocean lower than the land. They sing the final destiny of things, The great result of all our labours here, The last day's glory, and the world renew'd. Such are their themes for in these happier days The bard enraptur'd scorns ignoble strains, Fair science smiling and full truth revealed, The world at peace, and all her tumults o'er, The blissful prelude to Emanuel's reign. EUGENIO. And when a train of rolling years are past, (So sang the exil'd seer in Patmos isle,) A new Jerusalem sent down from heav'n Shall grace our happy earth, perhaps this land, Whose virgin bosom shall then receive, tho' late, Myriads of saints with their almighty king, To live and reign on earth a thousand years Thence call'd Millennium. Paradise a new Shall flourish, by no second Adam lost. No dang'rous tree or deathful fruit shall grow, No tempting serpent to allure the soul, From native innocence; a Canaan here Another Canaan shall excel the old And from fairer Pisgah's top be seen, No thistle here or briar or thorn shall spring Earth's curse before: the lion and the lamb In mutual friendship link'd shall browse the shrub, And tim'rous deer with rabid tygers stray O'er mead or lofty hill or grassy plain. Another Jordan's stream shall glide along And Siloah's brook in circling eddies flow, Groves shall adorn their verdant banks, on which The happy people free from second death Shall find secure repose; no fierce disease No fevers, slow consumption, direful plague Death's ancient ministers, again renew Perpetual war with man: Fair fruits shall bloom Fair to the eye, sweet to the taste, if such Divine inhabitants could need the taste Of elemental food, amid the joys Fit for a heav'nly nature. Music's charms Shall swell the lofty soul and harmony Triumphant reign; thro' ev'ry grove shall sound The cymbal and the lyre, joys too divine For fallen man to know. Such days the world And such America thou first shall have When ages yet to come have run their round And future years of bliss alone remain. ACASTO. This is thy praise America thy pow'r Thou best of climes by science visited By freedom blest and richly stor'd with all The luxuries of life. Hail happy land The seat of empire the abode of kings, The final stage where time shall introduce Renowned characters, and glorious works Of high invention and of wond'rous art, Which not the ravages of time shall wake Till he himself has run his long career; Till all those glorious orbs of light on high The rolling wonders that surround the ball, Drop from their spheres extinguish'd and consum'd; When final ruin with her fiery car Rides o'er creation, and all nature's works Are lost in chaos and the womb of night.

america

JohnKeats

AProphecyToGeorgeKeatsInAmerica

'Tis the witching hour of night, Orbed is the moon and bright, And the stars they glisten, glisten, Seeming with bright eyes to listen -- For what listen they? For a song and for a charm, See they glisten in alarm, And the moon is waxing warm To hear what I shall say. Moon! keep wide thy golden ears -- Hearken, stars! and hearken, spheres! -- Hearken, thou eternal sky! I sing an infant's lullaby, A pretty lullaby. Listen, listen, listen, listen, Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten, And hear my lullaby! Though the rushes that will make Its cradle still are in the lake -- Though the linen that will be Its swathe, is on the cotton tree -- Though the woollen that will keep It warm, is on the silly sheep -- Listen, starlight, listen, listen, Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten, And hear my lullaby! Child, I see thee! Child, I've found thee Midst of the quiet all around thee! And thy mother sweet is nigh thee! But a Poet evermore! See, see, the lyre, the lyre, In a flame of fire, Upon the little cradle's top Flaring, flaring, flaring, Past the eyesight's bearing, Awake it from its sleep, And see if it can keep Its eyes upon the blaze -- Amaze, amaze! It stares, it stares, it stares, It dares what no one dares! It lifts its little hand into the flame Unharm'd, and on the strings Paddles a little tune, and sings, With dumb endeavour sweetly -- Bard art thou completely! Little child O' th' western wild, Bard art thou completely! Sweetly with dumb endeavour, A Poet now or never, Little child O' th' western wild, A Poet now or never!

america

JOSEMURGUIA

ASoldierToAmerica

I HEAR CRY'S FOR HELP AND BOMBS EXPLODE, BUT IM SO FAR AWAY FROM HOME, AMERICA I STAND HERE ALONE, FIGHTING FOR PEACE BUT SO FAR AWAY FROM HOME, AMERICA I STAND WITH A GUN IN MY HAND, FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM WITH OUT A PLAN, AMERICA DO YOU REALLY NEED ANOTHER WAR, IM JUST A SOLDIER THAT COULDNT TAKE NO MORE... 7/28/09

america

JohnLyday

America2009

America has traded in his Mercedes For a beat up, General Motors car. It has a fender and door of different colors. It leaks water, burns oil and won’t go far. America is standing at unemployment, all morning, just to see the clerk. Diligently, he pursues positions, along with millions looking for work. America is loading up a U-haul. His wife and kids are moving to their aunt’s. A sign in the yard says “For Sale - Bank Owned”. When he bought it, he didn’t stand a chance. America is standing at an off ramp, wearing jeans he bought at Goodwill, a cardboard sign saying “Help my Family”, collecting dollars from passing automobiles.

america

WilliamBlake

AmericaAProphecy

The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc, When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode: His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron: Crown'd with a helmet and dark hair the nameless female stood; A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night, When pestilence is shot from heaven: no other arms she need! Invulnerable though naked, save where clouds roll round her loins Their awful folds in the dark air: silent she stood as night; For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise, But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay'd his fierce embrace. 'Dark Virgin,' said the hairy youth, 'thy father stern, abhorr'd, Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my spirit soars; Sometimes an Eagle screaming in the sky, sometimes a Lion Stalking upon the mountains, and sometimes a Whale, I lash The raging fathomless abyss; anon a Serpent folding Around the pillars of Urthona, and round thy dark limbs On the Canadian wilds I fold; feeble my spirit folds, For chain'd beneath I rend these caverns: when thou bringest food I howl my joy, and my red eyes seek to behold thy face-- In vain! these clouds roll to and fro, and hide thee from my sight.' Silent as despairing love, and strong as jealousy, The hairy shoulders rend the links; free are the wrists of fire; Round the terrific loins he seiz'd the panting, struggling womb; It joy'd: she put aside her clouds and smiled her first-born smile, As when a black cloud shews its lightnings to the silent deep. Soon as she saw the terrible boy, then burst the virgin cry: 'I know thee, I have found thee, and I will not let thee go: Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa, And thou art fall'n to give me life in regions of dark death. On my American plains I feel the struggling afflictions Endur'd by roots that writhe their arms into the nether deep. I see a Serpent in Canada who courts me to his love, In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru; I see a Whale in the south-sea, drinking my soul away. O what limb-rending pains I feel! thy fire and my frost Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent. This is eternal death, and this the torment long foretold.'

america

DelmoreSchwartz

AmericaAmerica

I am a poet of the Hudson River and the heights above it, the lights, the stars, and the bridges I am also by self-appointment the laureate of the Atlantic -of the peoples' hearts, crossing it to new America. I am burdened with the truck and chimera, hope, acquired in the sweating sick-excited passage in steerage, strange and estranged Hence I must descry and describe the kingdom of emotion. For I am a poet of the kindergarten (in the city) and the cemetery (in the city) And rapture and ragtime and also the secret city in the heart and mind This is the song of the natural city self in the 20th century. It is true but only partly true that a city is a "tyranny of numbers" (This is the chant of the urban metropolitan and metaphysical self After the first two World Wars of the 20th century) --- This is the city self, looking from window to lighted window When the squares and checks of faintly yellow light Shine at night, upon a huge dim board and slab-like tombs, Hiding many lives. It is the city consciousness Which sees and says: more: more and more: always more.

america

JosephAnderson

AmericaAmerica

Sing out! sing out! America, ''Sweet land of liberty; Tell how we chased the red man ''From sea to shining sea''. Be proud, stand tall America, ''Home of the free and brave''; Ignore that angry black man, Ancestored from a slave. Sing out! ''This land is your land, It was made for you and me'', While toiling tenant farmers Reside in poverty. And sing about our many wars, With them we must abide; But tell the loyal citizens, God was always on their side. Corruption and intolerance Defies our rule of law. ''America! America! ''God mend thine every flaw''.

america

JoyceHemsley

AmericaEllisIsland

In days of long ago, how did Europeans enter America? I read the history and now I know. They arrived at Ellis Island at the mouth of the Hudson River often on a sunny day, but sometimes they would shiver. The Island was given a second name... 'Isle of Tears' as when immigrants failed the acceptance test, they cried away their fears. But millions of hopefuls were invited to set foot in America, to live out their dreams and fantasies forever and a day, thankful for the gift which brought success their way. Beginning of the eighteenth century Britain's Samuel Ellis gave his name bringing more interest and immigrants to an Island of prosperity and fame. Mothers and fathers came with children, I mention just a few... Irving Berlin, Claudette Colbert, Sam Goldwyn, Bob Hope, Al Johnson ~ and many more, finding success through Ellis Island door. Note: The Ellis Island is not used now, having been declared a Natonal Historic Site in 1965 by Johnson.

america

VaranasiRamabrahmam

AmericaEuropeAndAsia

America, Europe and Asia are continents; The first two interfere devastatingly in the third one's affairs; Historical accidents helped Traders turning to colonizers by interfering with Machiavellian tactics In the local political matters of Asian nations And settling as ‘rulers' Being helped by egoistic and inefficient native rulers, gun powder and canons; Europe waged two world wars Drawing every nation into the conflicts and destruction; America dominated world scene after II world war Cold war divided Europe and the world into two camps, capitalist and communist; Non-aligned nations were dubbed as developing or underdeveloped Were laughed at for their sense of independence; Heroes, heroines and villains are made Depending on whether you are for CIA or for KGB, Whole globe was converted into espionage see-saw; Europe and America Facilitated the division of India, China, Korea, Vietnam, Yemen Using religion and ideology as sharp knives, Finally Israel was hoisted on Palestine; The fires thus started are still claiming many lives Depriving the concerned nations of peace and well-being; America and Europe practice and ‘preach' democracy; On the other hand Do not hesitate to side dictators to suit foreign policy and diplomacy; The same dictator of Mesopotamia, pampered, cultivated and encouraged To wage war with his neighboring nation in the eighties Suddenly becomes accumulator of weapons of mass destruction; False reports would be created and he would be hounded and executed Under the pretext of war on terror and also to protect and install democracy there, The real interest being to have free access to vast oil reserves available there; Taliban is created with an ally to fight communists now becomes Terrorists and are fought with the ‘help' of same ally against ‘terror'; Billions and billions of dollars are being spent to fight and eliminate their own creations What a fine diplomacy and colossal waste of money? ! America and Europe allowed terrorist organizations against Asian nations To flourish on their soils as ‘freedom movements' And gave asylum to many such in the name of protecting human rights And allowed to collect funds for their ‘causes'; But 9/11 and 7/7 changed all that pampering and perception of ‘freedom movements', And ‘liberal' attitude towards terrorists turned into fight against terrorism; Rudely awakened the richest country And its closest ally, the most successful colonizer and alter ego, To the realities of terrorist attacks and terrorism; Immediately wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are started to save America and Europe From Osama bin laden and the Al-Qaeda Despite their bitter experiences in Vietnam and Palestine; Might be lives of citizens of ‘rich' nations are dearer and more valuable; Hundreds of Asians have been getting killed daily and casualties to the redeemers too are mounting Advocates of free society got caught in quagmire of their own creation; Champions of human rights allowed rendition flights to land and refuel in their airports Ran torture chambers in Guantanamo Bay; If drones kill Taliban and innocent citizens daily, it is war on terror, If an Asian air force bombs its terrorists It is violation of human rights; These very developed and civilized nations frisk travelers to their country based on their name, Arrest and keep in detention without trial under draconian laws specially enacted, Arrogantly complain that Asian countries are discriminating against their minority And dub them as poor in maintaining human rights record; Desire to be global instructor, human-rights' watcher, world police etc., can be understood But the headmaster mentality of these two continents treating rest of the world As their students is too much; It is high time the 'rich' nations sign Kyoto protocol And Europe does not put sanctions on free world trade To protect the interests of nations of European Union; Let the consumerist culture which plunged the world into worst Economical disaster and depression not be spread; Let the Asian nations maintain themselves based on their respective cultures and civilizations; Nations where civilizations ancient flourished When America and Europe were uninhabited wild forests, Need not be instructed by starters of world wars And droppers of atomic bombs; Let charity begin at home; Hurricane Katrina rehabilitation and Health Care Insurance imbroglio Teen-age abortions and disturbed family relations Tells the world about their abilities to take care of their citizens; Let us all live in peace as equals; Let the head masters leave the ‘pupils' to mend and manage themselves Where their ancient civilizations are still alive And can guide the world as a whole towards peace and prosperity in the real sense

america

HerbertNehrlich

AmericaTheGoodNeighbour

It is time that I speak up for what they call America for a people not appreciated much, they are generous to all and help the needy near and far millions gladly felt the good old Yankee touch. There is Germany and Britain, and Japan and Italy they were showered with those dollars and forgiven many debts were cancelled all to end their self-caused misery new investments, new economies were driven. While some debts remained in place and should be honoured as of right it is clear that not one country pays a dime, you would think that just the interest would be given without fight but the world does not regard this as a crime. It was nineteen-fifty-six and Vive La France was near collapse guess who came to prop her up in those dark days? Yes it was the helpful Yankees, while De Gaulle was taking naps but the money disappeared into the haze. Look at earthquakes in those regions where the people are so poor who will hurry to the places and assist, yet tornadoes flatten cities in the homeland every year any helpers must have faded in the mist. When the Marshall Plan pumped billions into countries destitute there were smiles of gratitude on every face yet today their papers write about the decadent dispute and are calling them the warring tyrant race. Look at planes that fly those people in convenient and safe trips to the places where the world looks not like home should you hear the names of Boeing, DC-Ten on foreign lips on the way to a now free and prosperous Rome? When the railways broke in Germany, in France and India they were rebuilt by Americans, my word, when they did collapse at home, in Pennsylvania and New York no single miracle occurred. No one lend them even one lousy caboose. I can name five thousand times when old America would act while the rest of our great world were in a snooze. Take an earthquake on the coast, and with little left intact who of all the mentioned countries would be seen? I could go and tell you more but maybe all will get the gist that Americans have always been too keen to be nurse and, yes policeman while the envious souls get pissed so America, you ought to stand up tall. No one stands with you in times when there is need for a strong shoulder that could help you and prevent that some might fall I have seen you go alone and with your goodness move the boulder while the sneering and the whistling could be heard. And today, courageous people, you are faced with a new foe that will plant your precious boys deep in the dirt once again the world is watching and enjoying their own show screaming insults, throwing rocks at simple folks. It is not the Ma's and Pa's or all their offspring that is bad and there really is no room for your poor jokes. It is George and Donald and some others who've gone mad as the devil of Big Greed has grabbed their hand. Uncle Sam and his mean henchmen need to go inside a cell so the people can get back their promised land. And I pray for my America, Get Well. Note: This was inspired by the radio address of Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian, in the seventies. I kept the title as well

america

HenryVanDyke

AmericaForMe

'Tis fine to see the Old World and travel up and down Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, To admire the crumblyh castles and the statues and kings But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things. So it's home again, and home again, America for me! My heart is turning home again and there I long to be, In the land of youth and freedom, beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars. Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air; And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair; And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome; But when it comes to living there is no place like home. I like the German fir-woods in green battalions drilled; I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing foutains filled; But, oh, to take your had, my dear, and ramble for a day In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her sway! I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack! The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back. But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free-- We love our land for what she is and what she is to be. Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me! I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea, To the blessed Land of Room Enough, beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

america

EdgarLeeMasters

AmericaIn1804

(America Conquers Europe.) Foul shapes that hate the day, again grown bold, Late driven hence, infested fane and court. The laurels of our victory were amort. Vile King-craft with his breed of blood and gold Took heart to see the ancient wrongs infold Our life, and childish figments which disport I' that pale light whose essence mayn't support Realities, in Freedom's hall to hold Sick carnival did troop. But at the height Of that debauch, while yet could be erased The smut and spittle from the sacred chart, Written in blood --a man whose soul gave light Intolerable to kings, their power abased, As he subdued the empire of the heart.

america

EdgarLeeMasters

AmericaIn1904

(Europe Conquers America.) Strong for the strong and in his own conceit; Half-boy, half-madman, playing with the fire; Usurper, hoodlum, wed to his desire; Loud in the hunt--afraid albeit to beat The wolves which reared him--always with swift feet, Booted and spurred to huddle in the mire The malcontents, though Freedom die--no higher Launching his truncheon; only to the street Thundering at millionaires; unlearned, though read, In human agony--surrendered up To glory, war--of empty pomp the chief-- Europa, thou hast conquered! with bowed head For Freedom slain (who prayed might pass the cup) We pray, in faith, thy triumph may be brief!

america

AntonioLiao

AmericaIsAmerica

America is America the land of the free, born in the hope of a new world created, amongst men who believed the vision of liberty and a freedom to live in this glorious world as inspired by valued people, created by its natural landscaping, bounded by principles that to live in harmony with nature has come to witness the wisdom of our dear forefather the dignity of each man, living in a time of what has been bless by the Almighty Father perfected by His creation as the spring birth the summer breeze, and the night comes after the day, the morning has bless the loving people of America, where respect and understanding welcome all nation to shelter, the cheddar of Lebanon Oh! America, where every hope comes in the most expected ways, come swift it away for the day has given to you to stay, Nay! America leaves us with pain, our hearts echo it joy to renew the eternity bell, where you always there to lend your hand, Alas! America, your the answer of our call, the unity that we almost fall, the clings of every nation souls to live freely as everybody wants to be free America is America, the journey that always there, the step that make us well and the nation that takes you there Viva America!

america

LonnieHicks

AmericaIsAnIdea

In the Rotations of the Universe periodically, the Destiny Dial clicks to that space called Community. Then all the world celebrates and weeps- tears which sparkle and reflect each hope, each dream; when we all plant our Heart Flower Seeds in the garden hoping for the Future which heals. Not Miracles but Peace, not Riches; but Shared Prosperity; not no fear but lessened anxiety. America is an Ideal. Every once in a while She produces that hand which re-lights the torch of Lady Liberty near extinguished by extremity; a new hand which reaches out to millions of other hands which reach back affirming the simple retort: Yes We Can. Sing now as others have sung for phase, line and meter bring back the music. only America can sing, of an era which maybe, just maybe will crack that shut door, where Hope's light will shine through upon child faces where the children glimpse new possibilities; where new shinings illuminate each child-face bless each and their progeny; all bathed now in that precious prospect where there is respect for lives human and non-human. Where peace is not extinguished by flesh-mauling war machines. American is an idea that won't die; an experiment amid swarms of tyrannies; where sometimes the Universal Clock Pointer swings round to that wondrous space we call Liberty; and Peace; All this signaled potentially by a goat herder's son who had that same dream. Democracy is that system best preserved because no one knows where Potential emanates from; or lessons that can be learned from a goats herders son and that Kansas wife who had a different dream.

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TradeMartin

AmericaIsInIntensiveCare

America Is In Intensive Care……., It’s just clinging to life……, And its chances are slim and rare……, Of coming out of the evil in there….., Looks like it might wind down……, To that ‘two thousand twelve year’……., The year so many psychics have predicted…….., And we all gravely fear……, Still I doubt they’ll be a chance for more……, The Mayans warned of this doomsday……., Thousands of years before……., Along with Nostradamus and the Bible And though it may be a stretch…….., Don’t forget the Pulitzer Prize winning, Al Gore……! ! ! So where do you think you’ll be……, When this final devastating event….., i Signals the absolute end……, Of America, our planet and all humankind……, As we know it, at the time….? ? ? For it’s been warned that death and destruction……, Will be the only remains on the Earth……., Distant alien civilizations may eventually find …! ! ! Kind of scary, isn’t it…..? ? ? (I’m actually too optimistic to believe this or let it worry me……! ! !)

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VelmarPeweeHaleJohnson

AmericaIs

America is red, white, and blue, the colors that stand so brave, and true. Men in battle facing death, Men in the world provoking crime, and theft. America stand up on your feet, Hold proudly out the flag, tenderly, and sweet. America is home of the true, Of people at peace like me, and you. Red is for the blood in battle we do shed, white is for the peace we all share, But sometimes we seldom even care. Blue is for the sky where our fathers have gone, and stayed, Watching us as we fight for peace both night, and day.

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MarieOrtiz

AngelOnYourShoulder

When you think you're all alone and troubles come your way There's an angel on your shoulder To guide you everyday. With a white light Shining brightly To protect you day and night This angel on your shoulder. Will never leave your sight.

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FlorenceDSchmalke

AmericaMyCountry

It's great to live in a country big and strong It doesn't matter if you are young or old Our thoughts are as good as gold Where we go on land or sea We can always be happy and free Free to express our thoughts and then Even express them over again To different people no matter what color or race In America for them there is always a place To make a home For their families to roam The fields; the woods. The countryside Especially the young man and his bride For seniors and teens In formals or jeans Who ever it may be Remember we can always be free Just like a bird chirping, singing happily. Like chipmunks in the wood Calling to his mate and being good. Good to his family And Grandpa talking to his Emily Pondering over ideas and thoughts galore And, off to bed and listen to him snore Taken up in the morning early light Whenever it is nice and bright In America where we are always free Where in New York Harbor stands the Statue of Liberty Her hand raised high toward the sky Where our planes in freedom fly Where all of us want to be America for you and me Liberty and freedom will never end I'll get down on both my knees and bend To thank God I am an American In a country great and grand Who wants to be anywhere else Except in America where we can do so much expand America will always be my land.

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AntonioLiao

America

wonderful land that makes us one fantastic place where everyone chases glorious as it is, a home where everybody belongs you have been the pot of the potter hat a dream that every race has raised alluring to the autumn spring, where winter awaits the crystal clear of summer a beauty that my heart gives the start of my journey's part amusing, my soul rejoices the scenery that offers me fall let my life make the same a moment where i remain stand still, dear America you await me, till i meet freedom that you give life as we live, thing has to believe, nation has to live cherish America

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ClaudeMcKay

America

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth! Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate. Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

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EdgarLeeMasters

America

Glorious daughter of time! Thou of the mild blue eye -- Thou of the virginal forehead --pallid, unfurrowed of tears-- Thou of the strong white hands with fingers dipped in the dye Of the blood that quickened the fathers of thee, in the ancient years, Leave thou the path of the beasts. Return thou again to the hills, Forsake thou the deserts of death, where ever the burning thirst, Flames in the throat for blood, for the vile desire that kills, Where the treacherous sands by the rebel cerastes are cursed, And the wastes are strewn with the bones of folly and hate. Return! where the sunlight gladdens the places of green, Where the stars comes forth, the heralds of faith and fate, And the winds of eternity breathe from a day unseen. Thou! what hast thou to do with a time burnt out and done? With the old Serbonian bog-- the marshes where nations were lost? Where wailings are heard of the dead, of the slaughtered Roman and Hun, And phosphorent lights arise in the hands of a stricken ghost, Dreaming of splendors of battle that glanced from a million shields, When the C¾sars pillaged for lust of gold and hunger of power; And the giants of Gothland festered and stank on the stretching fields, And the gods of the living were cursed, too weak to reveal the hour, When they should triumph and others should writhe in a dread defeat, In the day of thy grace, O fair and false to thy fathers and time, O thou whom the snares of kings already encompass thy feet, With thy singing robes besprent with the old Egyptian slime. But thou hast harkened to guile, to the cunning words of shame, To the tempter with pieces of gold and the praise of the drunken throng. Scornfully push from their hands the crown of a common fame, Not made for thy peaceful brows, for thou wert not born for wrong. Thou art the fruit of the groaning cycles of hope and love, Told of by maddened prophets who never beheld thy face, Who drew from the teeming earth and the fetterless sky above, That man was made to be free, and to stamp under foot the mace. How should thy innocent eyes ever leer with a reddened look? Or thy hair be scented save of the measureless sea? Or thy feet know the ways of deceit, wrote out in the murderous book, By monarchs who shrank from the scourging and doom of thy strength and thee? Beloved of time and of fate, cherished of justice and truth, Yet thou art free to do, to choose the ill and to die; To squander thy beauty for hire, to waste thy eternal youth -- For thou art eternal, if thou heedst them not, but pass by, Pass and return to the mountains of freedom and peace, Where heavenward flame the fires, where the torches may be relumed, To girdle the world with the light that was kindled in olden Greece; Or that the sparks may be scattered wherever injustice has doomed, Darkness to be the portion of those who famish for light. Be thou the great rock's shadow cast in a weary land, Be thou a star of guidance true in a wintry night, Be thou thyself, and thyself alone, as heaven hath planned.

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GertrudeStein

America

Once in English they said America. Was it English to them. Once they said Belgian. We like a fog. Do you for weather. Are we brave. Are we true. Have we the national colour. Can we stand ditches. Can we mean well. Do we talk together. Have we red cross. A great many people speak of feet. And socks.

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GodspowerOshodin

America

America, oh sweet home of mine Glories beaconing fine My heart longs for you Your path way i dream to pass thru. America, this dwelling of bountiful opportunities Other lands merging for your treaties. Beauty of all sought lies in your calling terrain Eyes for glory can never look in vain. America, these victors at battle field All from God, you obey and yield. you traces and fight the test of time, And glance at echoes of time. America, i accomodate you in my vacuum remaining No way for others complaining. Now, my muse waxing lyrica All for you America

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GraysonGivens

America

* I am not racist at all**This is how i feel about america**No disrespect to no body* They call me second class put chains on me mentally America has treated me like a slave can't even LOVE her cause she is WHITE they hate OUR president because he is BLACK my own race is like crab in a barrel mentally when one of us gets a taste of success the others get jelous envy and pull the successful crab down so it can never leave America has put this image that girls gotta be skinny to love size two to be sexy got these girls hating themselves for who they are America has also made my race look dumb, ignorant, gangsta, never going to make it and down us BUT LOOK we got a black president and they dogging him White boys wanna be down with bangers be black now America has raped us of our rights The white male has seprated my race putting us in catergories house n field slaves America robbed us blind I just simply wanna be happy with this girl but America isnt going to because they are cold closed minded and in my opinion scared

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HenryVanDyke

America

I love thine inland seas, Thy groves of giant trees, Thy rolling plains; Thy rivers' mighty sweep, Thy mystic canyons deep, Thy mountains wild and steep, All thy domains; Thy silver Eastern strands, Thy Golden Gate that stands Wide to the West; Thy flowery Southland fair, Thy sweet and crystal air, -- O land beyond compare, Thee I love best! Additional verses for the National Hymn, March, 1906.

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HermanMelville

America

I Where the wings of a sunny Dome expand I saw a Banner in gladsome air- Starry, like Berenice's Hair- Afloat in broadened bravery there; With undulating long-drawn flow, As rolled Brazilian billows go Voluminously o'er the Line. The Land reposed in peace below; The children in their glee Were folded to the exulting heart Of young Maternity. II Later, and it streamed in fight When tempest mingled with the fray, And over the spear-point of the shaft I saw the ambiguous lightning play. Valor with Valor strove, and died: Fierce was Despair, and cruel was Pride; And the lorn Mother speechless stood, Pale at the fury of her brood. III Yet later, and the silk did wind Her fair cold for; Little availed the shining shroud, Though ruddy in hue, to cheer or warm A watcher looked upon her low, and said- She sleeps, but sleeps, she is not dead. But in that sleep contortion showed The terror of the vision there- A silent vision unavowed, Revealing earth's foundation bare, And Gorgon in her hidden place. It was a thing of fear to see So foul a dream upon so fair a face, And the dreamer lying in that starry shroud. IV But from the trance she sudden broke- The trance, or death into promoted life; At her feet a shivered yoke, And in her aspect turned to heaven No trace of passion or of strife- A clear calm look. It spake of pain, But such as purifies from stain- Sharp pangs that never come again- And triumph repressed by knowledge meet, Power delicate, and hope grown wise, And youth matured for age's seat- Law on her brow and empire in her eyes. So she, with graver air and lifted flag; While the shadow, chased by light, Fled along the far-brawn height, And left her on the crag.

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JamesHenryLeighHunt

AnAngelInTheHouse

How sweet it were, if without feeble fright, Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight, An angel came to us, and we could bear To see him issue from the silent air At evening in our room, and bend on ours His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers News of dear friends, and children who have never Been dead indeed,--as we shall know forever. Alas! we think not what we daily see About our hearths,--angels that are to be, Or may be if they will, and we prepare Their souls and ours to meet in happy air;-- A child, a friend, a wife whose soft heart sings In unison with ours, breeding its future wings.

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JeanLomaxJackson

America

America! God gave you broadful landings Designated mountains, valleys, tropics. With measures of shady green pastures To keep the Promised Land, Showing. America! God gave you beautiful children Different races, ethnicities, cultures. With mixtures of created colors To keep the Melting Pot, pouring. America! God gave you bountiful harvests Delicate barley, whole wheat, grain. With multiple rows of healthy sheaves To keep the Milk and Honey, Flowing. America! God gave you blessedful knowledge Diligent progress in technology. With marketings of highest risings To keep the American Dream, Growing. America! God made you the glory of all lands Which HE searched out in pleasure. Filled with insight into things unseen To keep the Crown of Life, Glowing.

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OliviaTaylor

America

America the beautiful, America the great, America suits us all, America I cannot hate America we've come so far, America the free, If we wish upon a star, Then that wish shall be

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RobertCreeley

America

America, you ode for reality! Give back the people you took. Let the sun shine again on the four corners of the world you thought of first but do not own, or keep like a convenience. People are your own word, you invented that locus and term. Here, you said and say, is where we are. Give back what we are, these people you made, us, and nowhere but you to be.

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SydneyThompsonDobell

America

NOR force nor fraud shall sunder us! O ye Who north or south, on east or western land, Native to noble sounds, say truth for truth, Freedom for freedom, love for love, and God For God; O ye who in eternal youth Speak with a living and creative flood This universal English, and do stand Its breathing book; live worthy of that grand Heroic utterance—parted, yet a whole, Far yet unsever’d,—children brave and free Of the great Mother-tongue, and ye shall be Lords of an empire wide as Shakespeare’s soul, Sublime as Milton’s immemorial theme, And rich as Chaucer’s speech, and fair as Spenser’s dream.

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WilliamCullenBryant

America

OH mother of a mighty race, Yet lovely in thy youthful grace! The elder dames, thy haughty peers, Admire and hate thy blooming years. With words of shame And taunts of scorn they join thy name. For on thy cheeks the glow is spread That tints thy morning hills with red; Thy step—the wild deer’s rustling feet Within thy woods are not more fleet; Thy hopeful eye Is bright as thine own sunny sky. Ay, let them rail—those haughty ones, While safe thou dwellest with thy sons. They do not know how loved thou art, How many a fond and fearless heart Would rise to throw Its life between thee and the foe. They know not, in their hate and pride, What virtues with thy children bide; How true, how good, thy graceful maids Make bright, like flowers, the valley shades; What generous men Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen;— What cordial welcomes greet the guest By thy lone rivers of the West; How faith is kept, and truth revered, And man is loved, and God is feared, In woodland homes, And where the ocean border foams. There ’s freedom at thy gates and rest For Earth’s down-trodden and opprest, A shelter for the hunted head, For the starved laborer toil and bread. Power, at thy bounds, Stops and calls back his baffled hounds. Oh, fair young mother! on thy brow Shall sit a nobler grace than now. Deep in the brightness of the skies The thronging years in glory rise, And, as they fleet, Drop strength and riches at thy feet. Thine eye, with every coming hour, Shall brighten, and thy form shall tower; And when thy sisters, elder born, Would brand thy name with words of scorn, Before thine eye, Upon their lips the taunt shall die.

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GregoryCorso

AmericaPoliticaHistoriaInSpontaneity

O this political air so heavy with the bells and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest but rain to walk—How it rings the Washington streets! The umbrella’d congressmen; the rapping tires of big black cars, the shoulders of lobbyists caught under canopies and in doorways, and it rains, it will not let up, and meanwhile lame futurists weep into Spengler’s prophecy, will the world be over before the races blend color? All color must be one or let the world be done— There’ll be a chance, we’ll all be orange! I don’t want to be orange! Nothing about God’s color to complain; and there is a beauty in yellow, the old Lama in his robe the color of Cathay; in black a strong & vital beauty, Thelonious Monk in his robe of Norman charcoal— And if Western Civilization comes to an end (though I doubt it, for the prophet has not executed his prophecy) surely the Eastern child will sit by a window, and wonder the old statues, the ornamented doors; the decorated banquet of the West— Inflamed by futurists I too weep in rain at night at the midnight of Western Civilization; Dante’s step into Hell will never be forgotten by Hell; the Gods’ adoption of Homer will never be forgotten by the Gods; the books of France are on God’s bookshelf; no civil war will take place on the fields of God; and I don’t doubt the egg of the East its glory— Yet it rains and the motors go and continued when I slept by that wall in Washington which separated the motors in the death-parlor where Joe McCarthy lay, lean and stilled, ten blocks from the Capitol— I could never understand Uncle Sam his red & white striped pants his funny whiskers his starry hat: how surreal Yankee Doodle Dandy, goof! American history has a way of making you feel George Washington is still around, that is when I think of Washington I do not think of Death— Of all Presidents I have been under Hoover is the most unreal and FDR is the most President-looking and Truman the most Jewish-looking and Eisenhower the miscast of Time into Space— Hoover is another America, Mr. 1930 and what must he be thinking now? FDR was my youth, and how strange to still see his wife around. Truman is still in Presidential time. I saw Eisenhower helicopter over Athens and he looked at the Acropolis like only Zeus could. OF THE PEOPLE is fortunate and select. FOR THE PEOPLE has never happened in America or elsewhere. BY THE PEOPLE is the sadness of America. I am not politic. I am not patriotic. I am nationalistic! I boast well the beauty of America to all the people in Europe. In me they do not see their vision of America. O whenever I pass an American Embassy I don’t know what to feel! Sometimes I want to rush in and scream: “I’m American!” but instead go a few paces down to the American Bar get drunk and cry: “I’m no American!” The men of politics I love are but youth’s fantasy: The fine profile of Washington on coins stamps & tobacco wraps The handsomeness and death-in-the-snow of Hamilton. The eyeglasses shoe-buckles kites & keys of Ben Franklin. The sweet melancholy of Lincoln. The way I see Christ, as something romantic & unreal, is the way I see them. An American is unique among peoples. He looks and acts like a boyman. He never looks cruel in uniform. He is rednecked portly rich and jolly. White-haired serious Harvard, kind and wry. A convention man a family man a rotary man & practical joker. He is moonfaced cunning well-meaning & righteously mean. He is Madison Avenue, handsome, in-the-know, and superstitious. He is odd, happy, quicker than light, shameless, and heroic Great yawn of youth! The young don’t seem interested in politics anymore. Politics has lost its romance! The “bloody kitchen” has drowned! And all that is left are those granite façades of Pentagon, Justice, and Department— Politicians do not know youth! They depend on the old and the old depend on them and lo! this has given youth a chance to think of heaven in their independence. No need to give them liberty or freedom where they’re at— When Stevenson in 1956 came to San Francisco he campaigned in what he thought was an Italian section! He spoke of Italy and Joe DiMaggio and spaghetti, but all who were there, all for him, were young beatniks! and when his car drove off Ginsberg & I ran up to him and yelled: “When are you going to free the poets from their attics!” Great yawn of youth! Mad beautiful oldyoung America has no candidate the craziest wildest greatest country of them all! and not one candidate— Nixon arrives ever so temporal, self-made, frontways sideways and backways, could he be America’s against? Detour to vehicle? Mast to wind? Shore to sea? Death to life? The last President?

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JOEPOEWHIT

AmericaPolitico

DEALS, DEALS, DEALS. Small room, with twelve bathrooms. Envelopes fill the baskets. Mirrors with lipstick kisses. In the small room - elbows bump. In the office. OCCUPIED - next bathroom. Outside neighbors look. Cesspool trucks arrive. Dirt cover-up off lid. Man preys lid open. Next years news escapes. CESSPOOL CLEAN and POLITICS AGAIN.

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steveray

AmericaSings

Well I tried to make it sunday, but I got so damn depressed That I set my sights on monday and I got myself undressed I ain’t ready for the altar but I do agree there’s times When a woman sure can be a friend of mine Well, I keep on thinkin’ ’bout you, sister golden hair surprise And I just can’t live without you; can’t you see it in my eyes? I been one poor correspondent, and I been too, too hard to find But it doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air? Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care? Well I tried to fake it, I don’t mind sayin’, I just can’t make it Well, I keep on thinkin’ ’bout you, sister golden hair surprise And I just can’t live without you; can’t you see it in my eyes? Now I been one poor correspondent, and I been too, too hard to find But it doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air? Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care? Well I tried to fake it, I don’t mind sayin’, I just can’t make it

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TedSheridan

AmericaTheBeautifulAsASecondLanguage

Who are these immigrants who mow all of this grass in the medium strips and along the roadsides; areas that pedestrians don’t use. Whose job is it to fertilize and maintain this acreage; to kill the clover and dandelion that constantly flowers. Why is it necessary to beautify the tedious routes we take to and fro; the ones paved over as a short cut between points A and B. What about XYZ? ; out where expelled tire treads litter the road and where a gallon of gas is not enough to get you home… Who are these immigrants who come here to mow America's lawn? 2008 © TS

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KatharineLeeBates

AmericaTheBeautiful

O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And every gain divine! O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

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RayHansell

AmericaTheBeautiful

America The Beautiful That what the song says Those words ring loud and true Every day that I’m alive I see those words before my eyes Anywhere I chance to look In my heart this land will stay America The Beautiful Open meadows clear blue skies Hills all covered green I have been so many places There’s much that I have seen America The Beautiful That’s what the song says America The Beautiful Will remain my home sweet home If for some unknown reason You’re unhappy with this land You can always feel free to leave But in a freer country you’ll never stand 9-20-77/RJH © 8-14-10/RJH

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BintaBundu

AmericaTheMeltingPotLand

Their fruits proud and confident with their knowledge of modern technology but, historically sleeping. For some call America "The Heaven on Earth." This simply means, "As there are many different ways of dying to go to heaven and so there are many different ways of entering the United States of America. Since there are no differences in heaven between those who died by road accidents and those who died in the Titanic, And so there are no differences in America between their fruits, those with U.S. visas, those in stowaway ships, those jumping over the fence or even bush roads. like heaven or one like America." For some call America "The Land of Dreams." But in their restless sleep with only one hour to sleep and go back to work, their nightmare dreams are "evictions, Insurance Bills, Car notes, Tax bills, a dream no longer at ease - "The Bills." Yet some call America "The Land of Opportunities." Indeed what wonderful opportunities in the K.F.C. restaurants, Roy Rogers, Wendy's, McDonald's, the Great Merrymaids Cleaning Companies. And what a smile the CVS drug store has for selling Bengay Balsam, oops sleeping on a backache the next morning, a smile and everything is fine. As a poet I am reminding their historically sleeping fruits that this land, this beloved country, this portion of God's created earth, "America the Melting Pot Land." America the melting pot land is the only land on Earth folks flung and scattered from all over the world with different backgrounds, colors, races, and languages and melted, and blended, themselves never to be recognized. Although sometimes their zig zag tongues make their fruits ask them - Where are you from? - In this melting pot land "America," only God could save their proud fruits with whom they melted and blended. Thus violence has no color or race in this melting pot land. I counted my blessing as ninth grade school drop out to be melting and blending myself with intellectual poets in this melting pot land, "The United States of America."

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KatharineLeeBates

AmericaToEngland

1899 Who would trust England, let him lift his eyes To Nelson, columned o'er Trafalgar Square, Her hieroglyph of duty, written where The roar of traffic hushes to the skies; Or mark, while Paul's vast shadow softly lies On Gordon's statued sleep, how praise and prayer Flush through the frank young faces clustering there To con that kindred rune of sacrifice. O England, no bland cloud-ship in the blue, But rough oak plunging on o'er perilous jars Of reef and ice, our faith will follow you The more for tempest roar that strains your spars And splits your canvas, be your helm but true, Your courses shapen by the eternal stars. 1900 The nightmare melts at last, and London wakes To her old habit of victorious ease. More men, and more, and more for over-seas, More guns until the giant hammer breaks That patriot folk whom even God forsakes. Shall not Great England work her will on these, The foolish little nations, and appease An angry shame that in her memory aches? But far beyond the fierce-contested flood, The cannon-planted pass, the shell-torn town, The last wild carnival of fire and blood, Beware, beware that dim and awful Shade, Armored with Milton's sword and Cromwell's frown, Affronted Freedom, of her own betrayed!

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OliverWendellHolmes

AmericaToRussia

AUGUST 5, 1866 THOUGH watery deserts hold apart The worlds of East and West, Still beats the selfsame human heart In each proud Nation's breast. Our floating turret tempts the main And dares the howling blast To clasp more close the golden chain That long has bound them fast. In vain the gales of ocean sweep, In vain the billows roar That chafe the wild and stormy steep Of storied Elsinore. She comes! She comes! her banners dip In Neva's flashing tide, With greetings on her cannon's lip, The storm-god's iron bride! Peace garlands with the olive-bough Her thunder-bearing tower, And plants before her cleaving prow The sea-foam's milk-white flower. No prairies heaped their garnered store To fill her sunless hold, Not rich Nevada's gleaming ore Its hidden caves infold, But lightly as the sea-bird swings She floats the depths above, A breath of flame to lend her wings, Her freight a people's love! When darkness hid the starry skies In war's long winter night, One ray still cheered our straining eyes, The far-off Northern light. And now the friendly rays return From lights that glow afar, Those clustered lamps of Heaven that burn Around the Western Star. A nation's love in tears and smiles We bear across the sea, O Neva of the banded isles, We moor our hearts in thee!

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AldoKraas

AmericaWonT

America won't Be the same anymore Because they are fighting In the Afghanistan War

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JimNorausky

AprilFromCalendarScenicAmericaHaikuVerses

Sunflower legions lifted on green leafed shoulders stare dark horizons.

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HELENJWILLIAMS

AttackOnAmerica

Another beautiful day i thought as i arose from bed that day, Not ever knowing things could turn out this distructive way. As i entered the building with a smile on my face, And i greeted the friends I, ve made in this place, A glance at my watch made me quicken my pace. Up in the elevator to floor 101, My thoughts turned to pre - school & that of my son. Grabbed a quick cuppa & settled at my desk, File all the paperwork then tackle the rest. All of a sudden without warning at all, The whole building trembled & things began to fall. At first we thought earth quake - get out fast, But a look out the window confirmed a huge blast. Something had crashed into the building we share, With thousands of others - how would we fare? We all started to panic, we screamed & yelled, We knew this was bad & onto each other we held. I grabbed my cell phone & dialed my love, I asked him to pray to God above. I asked him to kiss my little son, And tell him his mummy, s number one. People were jumping & taking thier lives, We all knew we would never get out of here alive. I got down on the floor & covered my face, I didnt want to see what was about to take place. Next thing i knew i was falling through concrete & steel, This must be a nightmare, it just cant be real. God how could they find me in all of this mess, So many people - all in distress. I, m feeling very tired, i ache & i bleed, Im trapped in a concrete jungle Can you not hear my plea, s. I know feel peaceful, im drifting off to sleep, Pray for the others with the tears you weep. God bless America, my home sweet home, Open up the stairway God - This angel is commimg home...

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GeorgeSterling

BeforeDawnInAmerica

Slowly the hours beyond the midnight crawl. Far on the frozen night a train goes by. I know there is no starlight in the sky, But that concealing fog is over all, Alike for stars and men a somber pall. Remoter now, a cold, mechanic cry Is signal, and the poplars stir and sigh, As ranks that wait in vain the trumpet's call. Now breaks the day on Belgium and France. Over the shoulder of the world, I know What rubrics gleam on the recording snow (That page of Heaven's book that lay so pure!) As, votive to the race's huge mischance, Men die, O Liberty! that thou endure.

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GraysonGivens

BeingBlackInAmerica

Life is cold Life is shady Ima Black in america still getting treated like a second habd citizen Life is so unfair My flow is never heard Never felt Cause i am black in america I study keeping flowing creating styles cause I cant stick with one style But LIFE IS COLD America still wont let me be happy until they beat me mentally call me names make me feel bad for being black I am just going off LIfe is shady Ima done with this

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AmandaLukas

GuardianAngel

I owe my every effort to Her love, everlasting and true. In her silence, I am able to speak and see all things beautiful. She never left me. She isn't gone. I walk in solitude, but never alone. The angel watches me. And in my dreams she visits me with a smile that's comforting And in the morning, when I wake I have her song to sing.

angel

AldoKraas

TheFutureIsNotOursToSee

The future is not ours to see Whatever the future Bring to us We should be garateful For that

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AnthonyEvanHecht

BirdwatchersOfAmerica

It’s all very well to dream of a dove that saves, Picasso’s or the Pope’s, The one that annually coos in Our Lady’s ear Half the world’s hopes, And the other one that shall cunningly engineer The retirement of all businessmen to their graves, And when this is brought about Make us the loving brothers of every lout— But in our part of the country a false dusk Lingers for hours; it steams From the soaked hay, wades in the cloudy woods, Engendering other dreams. Formless and soft beyond the fence it broods Or rises as a faint and rotten musk Out of a broken stalk. There are some things of which we seldom talk; For instance, the woman next door, whom we hear at night, Claims that when she was small She found a man stone dead near the cedar trees After the first snowfall. The air was clear. He seemed in ultimate peace Except that he had no eyes. Rigid and bright Upon the forehead, furred With a light frost, crouched an outrageous bird.

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juliusthomas

BlackManInAmerica

Black Man In America for to long our chains held us so tight beaten down as far as the dust chained to the night Black Man In America can't you see we free now at least physically but freedom isn't free if we still enslaved mentally Black Man In America stand up and let your voices be heard your families are calling you because they don't deserve to be deserted or mistreated let us be stronger than they because the greatest retalation is providing a successful way for your black babies and mine to have a brighter day they are calling out to you heed their cry and respond favorably to them saying here am I Black Man In America we must continue to wage this fight and let our hands be strong and our fingers do the fightin' Black Man In America a success you must become because without success our freedom wasn't really won Black Man In America stand up and be heard its imperative for you to provide the light for a brighter day that your children so richly deserve Black Man In America

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MarilynLott

BloodOfAmerica

A senseless act of hatred can change Everything in a horrifying minute It is impossible to understand And so many lives are destroyed with it Lives of wonderful cherished folks Who tried to do what was right And then it was suddenly over There was never even a fight We ask God to help us understand What could bring about such hate To someone they don’t even know Who decides to change our fate Oh, such hurt and unending pain Is felt each and every day Please, God, be with loved ones And help in your unspoken way The sadness is shared by so many Giving things like flags and teddy bears Loving notes to send their love Brings forth so many tears I have faith that God will help us We will never forget what we saw Forever strong and flowing The precious blood of America! Written in honor of the Oklahoma City bombing

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JimNorausky

CalendarScenicAmericaHaikuVersesEachMonth

My wish for today: that poet friends were viewing this, coffee in hand. January Vibrant cherries shine ice covered branches glimmer muted background same. February Sun swept red mountains guard crowded boat marina masts and poles worship. March Angry beach and sky huge wave crashing red lighthouse birds, helical fence. April Legions of sunflowers stare lifted on green leafed shoulders stormy horizon May Whimsical lighthouse atop bouldered barren hill flanked by two small sheds. June Last light of sunset paints quiet water mosaic small sailboat silent. July Chocolate mountain snow sprinkles and pine tree stands field of orange flowers. August Two wierd cacti hands pierce upside down flaming pit desert sunset awe. September Mountain, lake couple reflecting one together blue sky intrudes. October Inferno color autumn trees dazzle senses old fence and field yield. November Sheltering pine limbs frame small misty lake island morning's golden light. December Classic large red barn pine and young elm trees surround snow on roof and yard. My poet friends may you have all life's blessings and enjoy nature. Jim Norausky Katy, Texas January,2009

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GeorgeBarker

CircularFromAmerica

Against the eagled Hemisphere I lean my eager Editorial ear And what the devil You think I hear? I hear the Beat No not of the heart But the dull palpitation Of the New Art As, on the dead tread, Mill of no mind, It follows its leaders Unbeaten behind. O Kerouac Kerouac What on earth shall we do If a single Idea Ever gets through? . . . 1/2 an idea To a hundred pages Now Jack, dear Jack, That ain't fair wages For labouring through Prose that takes ages Just to announce That Gods and Men Ought all to study The Book of Zen. If you really think So low of the soul Why don't you write On a toilet roll?

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UdiahwitnesstoYah

ConceptOfAmericaAmericaAmericaAmericaAmericaAmerica

People united To secure their liberty Out of many, one I've written a letter for anyone who cares where this great country of ours is heading. It has bothered some on this poetry sight so much they have had it removed from the search engine, despite my many attempts at restoring it. Why do they allow certain authors to lambaste our great country, while anyone trying to bring forth the truth is silenced? The letter is entitled 'Our Liberty' © 2011 America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America America freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku haiku

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FrederickKesner

CrossroadsOfAmerica

Crossroads of this brave New World: tiring - perhaps no longer young Big city, rural city? central point - refreshing - this nation's innovative belly city of indigenous America, cosmopolitan reflective - luminescent in waning light hopeful in the new day dawning bright still movement, raucous plains of crop Gridded out on one mile square soldiers and sailors commemorate midpoint triumph at Monument Circle no governor on this spot will reside interstates intersect downtown - out of town; glass-domed rotunda docile suspensions champions cheer in the hall of White River fast paced spin abouts at the Motor Speedway To the eye of tourist local or overseas - dimming star spangled glory revived midway between coast to coast she lay Who is there? Indianapolis, city fair.

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JosephTRenaldi

GuardianAngel

You never stand alone When your guardian angel is always near, During the moments of trials and tribulation, You will never be overcome with fear. His presence may not be seen, Regardless of where you are, Rest assured that his halo is always shining Like the brightest, heavenly star. You never stand alone, When in your heart you know, Your guardian angel is your protectorate, Who hovers over you and loves you so.

angel

AldoKraas

TheMonthOfJune

The month of June Doesn't wait for me anymore Because it comes and goes And everyday is a different day on the June calendar But I don't mind it at all

june

JamesKennethStephen

EnglandAndAmerica

1. ON A RHINE STEAMER. Republic of the West, Enlightened, free, sublime, Unquestionably best Production of our time. The telephone is thine, And thine the Pullman Car, The caucus, the divine Intense electric star. To thee we likewise owe The venerable names Of Edgar Allan Poe, And Mr. Henry James. In short it's due to thee, Thou kind of Western star, That we have come to be Precisely what we are. But every now and then, It cannot be denied, You breed a kind of men Who are not dignified, Or courteous or refined, Benevolent or wise, Or gifted with a mind Beyond the common size, Or notable for tact, Agreeable to me, Or anything, in fact, That people ought to be. 2. ON A PARISIAN BOULEVARD. Britannia rules the waves, As I have heard her say; She frees whatever slaves She meets upon her way. A teeming mother she Of Parliaments and Laws; Majestic, mighty, free: Devoid of common flaws. For here did Shakspere write His admirable plays: For her did Nelson fight And Wolseley win his bays. Her sturdy common sense Is based on solid grounds: By saving numerous pence She spends effective pounds. The Saxon and the Celt She equitably rules; Her iron rod is felt By countless knaves and fools. In fact, mankind at large, Black, yellow, white and red, Is given to her in charge, And owns her as a head. But every here and there-- Deny it if you can-- She breeds a vacant stare Unworthy of a man: A look of dull surprise; A nerveless idle hand: An eye which never tries To threaten or command: In short, a kind of man, If man indeed he be, As worthy of our ban As any that we see: Unspeakably obtuse, Abominably vain, Of very little use, And execrably plain.

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KatharineLeeBates

EnglandToAmerica

And what of thee, O Lincoln's Land? What gloom Is darkening above the Sunset Sea? Vowed Champion of Liberty, deplume Thy war-crest, bow thy knee, Before God answer thee. What talk is thine of rebels? Didst thou turn, My very child, thy vaunted sword on me, To scoff to-day at patriot fires that burn In hearts unbound to thee, Flames of the Sunset Sea?

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UdiahwitnesstoYah

GodBlessUsAmericaAmericaAmericaAmericaAmerica

O Lord, our refuge and strength When it's 'in God we trust' The foe has struck your firstborn With a great infamous thrust Like history repeated A Trojan Horse await To massacre the blameless A 'Nine-eleven' fate They've dared defy an army That does proclaim you Lord Deliver US from their hand Whet your glittering sword Our Father who's in heaven Shield US, your battle axe Guard these in Thy replevin Then Babylon do tax Give US righteous victory In Thy name, Lord of host So that all the earth may know 'In God we trust' foremost O Lord, our Rock and fortress 'Land of the Free' protect Keep US strong 'til Shiloh come Then on to Him collect He maketh the wars to cease Unto the end of earth Breaketh bow, cut sunder spear To chariots flame's birth 'Be calm, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.'* The Lord of hosts is with US Our refuge we proclaim Bless US in our endeavor We ask in Jesus name *Psalms 46: 10, Inspired by Jeremiah Chapters 50 and 51 © 2011

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winterlees

GodBlessedAmerica

god blessed america when he made the earth god blessed america when he sent his son to sacrifise god blessed america when he made us and god blessed america when he made you

america

TradeMartin

IBelieveInAmerica

I Believe In America…., we’re a nation of hopes and dreams….., Sweet freedom will fill our needs…., I Believe In America. I Believe In America…., I believe we must fight for peace…., My faith in us will never cease…., I Believe In America. With His strength from up above…, We’ll prevail on our massive quest…, Our nation breathes kindness and love….., We’ll lead our world to happiness. I Believe In America…, we are united in democracy…., Defeating evil and hypocrisy…., I Believe In America. Our Lord is watching every move we make….., I know He’ll help us do our best…., Guiding us with every step we take…., Because our lives are truly blessed. I Believe In America…., we’re a nation of hopes and dreams….., Sweet freedom will fill our needs…., I Believe In America. Yes, I Believe In America.

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WaltWhitman

IHearAmericaSinging

I Hear America singing, the varied carols I hear; Those of mechanics--each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong; The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work; The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat--the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck; The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench--the hatter singing as he stands; The wood-cutter's song--the ploughboy's, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown; The delicious singing of the mother--or of the young wife at work--or of the girl sewing or washing--Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else; The day what belongs to the day--At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

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TheresaMLeicht

IKnowADreamCalledAmerica

I know a dream called America - That led to freedom - our precious - freedom. That was won - That was won - through - loneliness - hunger - blood- Sweat - and tears. By your christian forefathers - who Fought on with determination - through The night - and through the day - till The war was won. In the cold - cold - winter snow of Seventeen-Seventy-Six - that won us our freedom. Happy birthday America to everyone Say a prayer for your country - everyone - Give a helping hand - everyone - for the Cause of freedom - everyone - let no one take your freedom from this land - for It is our hope - and our passport everyone - And our golden gate - to the promised land - Where our almighty God abides. - Happy birthday America - to everyone - May we share - many many more. I know a dream called America - That lead to Freedom - our precious Freedom. That was won - that was won - Through loneliness - and hunger - blood - Sweat - and tears Happy birthday America - to everyone - Say a prayer for your country - everyone - Give a helping hand - everyone - for the Cause of Freedom from this land - for it's Our hope - and your passport - everyone - and Our golden gate - to the promised land - Where Almighty God - abides.

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VaidaMarea

ITooSingAmericaInspiredByLangstonHughes

I, too, sing America The melody is quiet but still passes my lips I am the elusive ingenue The restless whisper of a wood nymph You can hardly tell I'm there Waiting quietly in my shell For the right moment to emerge.

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D├│nallDempsey

IWantToBeInAmerica

First one foot then gingerly the other steps from the swivel chair to the table top where blindly you fiddle with the slats caught - now - un-caught - still sleepy I turn to see you naked against skyscrapers & mewing like a kitty stuck up a tree. 'Help ne... help me down! ' as the swivel chair spins around and away. You look so good I look twice before taking your nakedness in hand lowering you gently to the ground & then ever more gently to the bed. You purr Outside New York continues to be New York. Times Square ...Time Squares. The sound of kisses overcoming the traffic's roar. ******* The Sheraton New York & Towers Hotel...midnight...Christmas Eve's eve.2009

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NikunjSharma

ItsAmericaYouFool

Baby boomers were cool; Now Ninjas rule. It’s America you fool. Junk food; Was cool dude. Only joys no sorrow; They consumed as if; no tomorrow. Sub standard education; In their social school. Still; Its America you fool. Dubya's wars; Permanent scars. Russia's gone; Iraq stumped. Against tough times; Their economy bumped. Its size aint miniscule; It’s America you fool. Big bangs; Use of slangs. Moral falls; Haughty attitudes. Roller coaster ride; Changing vicissitudes. On the top once; Now at bottom they drool; It’s America you fool.. No future in sight; The corner's tight. Their world’s dark; Ours is bright. They live on hopes; Under Obama's rule; Its America you fool. Who knows from here; Where they go? The world debates the rates; By which they shall grow. Once fast; now very slow; Shall they go. Swelling debt, soaring crime; Rest taken care by Subprime. America aint no longer cool; Its economics u fool. Hybernate they shall, as I can see; As there's no lunch that comes free. An economy so agile; Shall stay now low profile. Till they rise and rise again; After alleviation of their domestic pain Hope and hope surely he brings; After the fall as spring springs. As he takes on the reigns today; He knows the challenges that waylay. New ties and new friends; Hope with him the hostility ends; Hope millions of hearts, he does rule; It’s Obama, not bush u fool. From the lectern; As he speaks. The floor under him firmly creaks; Shake off the dust; He says. Expose yourself; To sun's rays. To work hard; To save more; So that one day; America may again gleam. With him he brings; A new American dream.

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LangstonHughes

LetAmericaBeAmericaAgain

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-- Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-- For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free." The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today. O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!

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GeorgeMeredith

LinesToAFriendVisitingAmerica

I Now farewell to you! you are One of my dearest, whom I trust: Now follow you the Western star, And cast the old world off as dust. II From many friends adieu! adieu! The quick heart of the word therein. Much that we hope for hangs with you: We lose you, but we lose to win. III The beggar-king, November, frets: His tatters rich with Indian dyes Goes hugging: we our season's debts Pay calmly, of the Spring forewise. IV We send our worthiest; can no less, If we would now be read aright, - To that great people who may bless Or curse mankind: they have the might. V The proudest seasons find their graves, And we, who would not be wooed, must court. We have let the blunderers and the waves Divide us, and the devil had sport. VI The blunderers and the waves no more Shall sever kindred sending forth Their worthiest from shore to shore For welcome, bent to prove their worth. VII Go you and such as you afloat, Our lost kinsfellowship to revive. The battle of the antidote Is tough, though silent: may you thrive! VIII I, when in this North wind I see The straining red woods blown awry, Feel shuddering like the winter tree, All vein and artery on cold sky. IX The leaf that clothed me is torn away; My friend is as a flying seed. Ay, true; to bring replenished day Light ebbs, but I am bare, and bleed. X What husky habitations seem These comfortable sayings! they fell, In some rich year become a dream:- So cries my heart, the infidel! . . . XI Oh! for the strenuous mind in quest, Arabian visions could not vie With those broad wonders of the West, And would I bid you stay? Not I! XII The strange experimental land Where men continually dare take Niagara leaps;--unshattered stand 'Twixt fall and fall;--for conscience' sake, XIII Drive onward like a flood's increase; - Fresh rapids and abysms engage; - (We live--we die) scorn fireside peace, And, as a garment, put on rage, XIV Rather than bear God's reprimand, By rearing on a full fat soil Concrete of sin and sloth;--this land, You will observe it coil in coil. XV The land has been discover'd long, The people we have yet to know; Themselves they know not, save that strong For good and evil still they grow. XVI Nor know they us. Yea, well enough In that inveterate machine Through which we speak the printed stuff Daily, with voice most hugeous, mien XVII Tremendous:- as a lion's show The grand menagerie paintings hide: Hear the drum beat, the trombones blow! The poor old Lion lies inside! . . . XVIII It is not England that they hear, But mighty Mammon's pipers, trained To trumpet out his moods, and stir His sluggish soul: HER voice is chained: XIX Almost her spirit seems moribund! O teach them, 'tis not she displays The panic of a purse rotund, Eternal dread of evil days, - XX That haunting spectre of success Which shows a heart sunk low in the girths: Not England answers nobleness, - 'Live for thyself: thou art not earth's.' XXI Not she, when struggling manhood tries For freedom, air, a hopefuller fate, Points out the planet, Compromise, And shakes a mild reproving pate: XXII Says never: 'I am well at ease, My sneers upon the weak I shed: The strong have my cajoleries: And those beneath my feet I tread.' XXIII Nay, but 'tis said for her, great Lord! The misery's there! The shameless one Adjures mankind to sheathe the sword, Herself not yielding what it won:- XXIV Her sermon at cock-crow doth preach, On sweet Prosperity--or greed. 'Lo! as the beasts feed, each for each, God's blessings let us take, and feed!' XXV Ungrateful creatures crave a part - She tells them firmly she is full; Lost sheared sheep hurt her tender heart With bleating, stops her ears with wool:- XXVI Seized sometimes by prodigious qualms (Nightmares of bankruptcy and death), - Showers down in lumps a load of alms, Then pants as one who has lost a breath; XXVII Believes high heaven, whence favours flow, Too kind to ask a sacrifice For what it specially doth bestow; - Gives SHE, 'tis generous, cheese to mice. XXVIII She saw the young Dominion strip For battle with a grievous wrong, And curled a noble Norman lip, And looked with half an eye sidelong; XXIX And in stout Saxon wrote her sneers, Denounced the waste of blood and coin, Implored the combatants, with tears, Never to think they could rejoin. XXX Oh! was it England that, alas! Turned sharp the victor to cajole? Behold her features in the glass: A monstrous semblance mocks her soul! XXXI A false majority, by stealth, Have got her fast, and sway the rod: A headless tyrant built of wealth, The hypocrite, the belly-God. XXXII To him the daily hymns they raise: His tastes are sought: his will is done: He sniffs the putrid steam of praise, Place for true England here is none! XXXIII But can a distant race discern The difference 'twixt her and him? My friend, that will you bid them learn. He shames and binds her, head and limb. XXXIV Old wood has blossoms of this sort. Though sound at core, she is old wood. If freemen hate her, one retort She has; but one!--'You are my blood.' XXXV A poet, half a prophet, rose In recent days, and called for power. I love him; but his mountain prose - His Alp and valley and wild flower - XXXVI Proclaimed our weakness, not its source. What medicine for disease had he? Whom summoned for a show of force? Our titular aristocracy! XXXVII Why, these are great at City feasts; From City riches mainly rise: 'Tis well to hear them, when the beasts That die for us they eulogize! XXXVIII But these, of all the liveried crew Obeisant in Mammon's walk, Most deferent ply the facial screw, The spinal bend, submissive talk. XXXIX Small fear that they will run to books (At least the better form of seed)! I, too, have hoped from their good looks, And fables of their Northman breed; - XL Have hoped that they the land would head In acts magnanimous; but, lo, When fainting heroes beg for bread They frown: where they are driven they go. XLI Good health, my friend! and may your lot Be cheerful o'er the Western rounds. This butter-woman's market-trot Of verse is passing market-bounds. XLII Adieu! the sun sets; he is gone. On banks of fog faint lines extend: Adieu! bring back a braver dawn To England, and to me my friend.

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WaltWhitman

LongTooLongAmerica

Long, too long America, Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only, But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not, And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are, (For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)

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PhillisWheatley

OnBeingBroughtFromAfricaToAmerica

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic die." Remember, Christians, Negro's, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

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WaltWhitman

OneSongAmericaBeforeIGo

ONE song, America, before I go, I'd sing, o'er all the rest, with trumpet sound, For thee--the Future. I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality; I'd fashion thy Ensemble, including Body and Soul; I'd show, away ahead, thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish'd. (The paths to the House I seek to make, But leave to those to come, the House itself.) Belief I sing--and Preparation; As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the Present only, 10 But greater still from what is yet to come, Out of that formula for Thee I sing.

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RichardBrautigan

Part10OfTroutFishingInAmerica

WITNESS FOR TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA PEACE In San Francisco around Easter time last year, they had a trout fishing in America peace parade. They had thousands of red stickers printed and they pasted them on their small foreign cars, and on means of national communication like telephone poles. The stickers had WITNESS FOR TROUT FISHING IN AM- ERICA PEACE printed on them. Then this group of college- and high-school-trained Com- munists, along with some Communist clergymen and their Marxist-taught children, marched to San Francisco from Sunnyvale, a Communist nerve center about forty miles away. It took them four days to walk to San Francisco. They stopped overnight at various towns along the way, and slept on the lawns of fellow travelers. They carried with them Communist trout fishing in Ameri- ca peace propaganda posters: "DON'T DROP AN H-BOMB ON THE OLD FISHING HOLE I" "ISAAC WALTON WOULD'VE HATED THE BOMB!" "ROYAL COACHMAN, SI! ICBM, NO!" They carried with them many other trout fishing in Amer- ica peace inducements, all following the Communist world conquest line: the Gandhian nonviolence Trojan horse. When these young, hard-core brainwashed members of the Communist conspiracy reached the "Panhandle, " the emigre Oklahoma Communist sector of San Francisco, thou- sands of other Communists were waiting for them. These were Communists who couldn't walk very far. They barely had enough strength to make it downtown. Thousands of Communists, protected by the police, marched down to Union Square, located in the very heart of San Fran- cisco. The Communist City Hall riots in 1960 had presented evidence of it, the police let hundreds of Communists escape, but the trout fishing in America peace parade was the final indictment: police protection. Thousands of Communists marched right into the heart of San Francisco, and Communist speakers incited them for hours and the young people wanted to blow up Colt Tower, but the Communist clergy told them to put away their plastic bombs. "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them . . . There will be no need for explosives, " they said. America needs no other proof. The Red shadow of the Gandhian nonviolence Trojan horse has fallen across Ameri- ca, and San Francisco is its stable. Obsolete is the mad rapist's legendary piece of candy. At this very moment, Communist agents are handing out Witness for trout fishing in America peace tracts to innocent children riding the cable cars.

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RichardBrautigan

Part1OfTroutFishingInAmerica

THE COVER FOR TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA The cover for Trout Fishing in America is a photograph taken late in the afternoon, a photograph of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco's Washington Square. Born 1706--Died 1790, Benjamin Franklin stands on a pedestal that looks like a house containing stone furniture. He holds some papers in one hand and his hat in the other. Then the statue speaks, saying in marble: PRESENTED BY H. D. COGSWELL TO OUR BOYS AND GIRLS WHO WILL SOON TAKE OUR PLACES AND PASS ON. Around the base of the statue are four words facing the directions of this world, to the east WELCOME, to the west WELCOME, to the north WELCOME, to the south WELCOME. Just behind the statue are three poplar trees, almost leafless except for the top branches. The statue stands in front of the middle tree. All around the grass is wet from the rains of early February. In the background is a tall cypress tree, almost dark like a room. Adlai Stevenson spoke under the tree in 1956, before a crowd of 40, 000 people. There is a tall church across the street from the statue with crosses, steeples, bells and a vast door that looks like a huge mousehole, perhaps from a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and written above the door is 'Per L'Universo.' Around five o'clock in the afternoon of my cover for Trout Fishing in America, people gather in the park across the street from the church and they are hungry. It's sandwich time for the poor. But they cannot cross the street until the signal is given. Then they all run across the street to the church and get their sandwiches that are wrapped in newspaper. They go back to the park and unwrap the newspaper and see what their sandwiches are all about. A friend of mine unwrapped his sandwich one afternoon and looked inside to find just a leaf of spinach. That was all. Was it Kafka who learned about America by reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.............. Kafka who said, 'I like the Americans because they are healthy and optimistic.'

america

RichardBrautigan

Part2OfTroutFishingInAmerica

ANOTHER METHOD OF MAKING WALNUT CATSUP And this is a very small cookbook for Trout Fishing in America as if Trout Fishing in America were a rich gourmet and Trout Fishing in America had Maria Callas for a girlfriend and they ate together on a marble table with beautiful candles. Compote of Apples Take a dozen of golden pippins, pare them nicely and take the core out with a small penknife; put them into some water, and let them be well scalded; then take a little of the water with some sugar, and a few apples which may be sliced into it, and let the whole boil till it comes to a syrup; then pour it over your pippins, and garnish them with dried cherries and lemon-peel cut fine. You must take care that your pippins are not split. And Maria Callas sang to Trout Fishing in America as they ate their apples together. A Standing Crust for Great Pies Take a peck of flour and six pounds of butter boiled in a gallon of water: skim it off into the flour, and as little of the liquor as you can. Work it up well into a paste, and then pull it into pieces till it is cold. Then make it up into what form you please. And Trout Fishing in America smiled at Maria Callas as they ate their pie crust together. A Spoonful Pudding Take a spoonful of flour, a spoonful of cream or milk, an egg, a little nutmeg, ginger, and salt. Mix all together, and boil it in a little wooden dish half an hour. If you think proper you may add a few currants . And Trout Fishing in America said, "The moon's coming out." And Maria Callas said, "Yes, it is." Another Method of Making Walnut Catsup Take green walnuts before the shell is formed, and grind them in a crab-mill, or pound them in a marble mortar. Squeeze out the juice through a coarse cloth, and put to every gallon of juice a pound of anchovies, and the same quantity of bay-salt, four ounces of Jamaica pepper, two of long and two of black pepper; of mace, cloves, and ginger, each an ounce, and a stick of horseradish. Boil all together till reduced to half the quantity, and then put it into a pot. When it is cold, bottle it close, and in three months it will be fit for use. And Trout Fishing in America and Maria Callas poured walnut catsup on their hamburgers. PROLOGUE TO GRIDER CREEK Mooresville, Indiana, is the town that John Dillinger came from, and the town has a John Dillinger Museum. You can go in and look around. Some towns are known as the peach capital of America or the cherry capital or the oyster capital, and there's always a festival and the photograph of a pretty girl in a bathing suit. Mooresville, Indiana, is the John Dillinger capital of America. Recently a man moved there with his wife, and he discovered hundreds of rats in his basement. They were huge, slowmoving child-eyed rats. When his wife had to visit some of her relatives for a few days, the man went out and bought a .38 revolver and a lot of ammunition. Then he went down to the basement where the rats were, and he started shooting them. It didn't bother the rats at all. They acted as if it were a movie and started eating their dead companions for popcorn. The man walked over to a rat that was busy eating a friend and placed the pistol against the rat's head. The rat did not move and continued eating away. When the hammer clicked back, the rat paused between bites and looked out of the corner of its eye. First at the pistol and then at the man. It was a kind of friendly look as if to say, "When my mother was young she sang like Deanna Durbin. " The man pulled the trigger. He had no sense of humor. There's always a single feature, a double feature and an eternal feature playing at the Great Theater in Mooresville, Indiana: the John Dillinger capital of America.

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RichardBrautigan

Part3OfTroutFishingInAmerica

SEA, SEA RIDER The man who owned the bookstore was not magic. He was not a three-legged crow on the dandelion side of the mountain. He was, of course, a Jew, a retired merchant seaman who had been torpedoed in the North Atlantic and floated there day after day until death did not want him. He had a young wife, a heart attack, a Volkswagen and a home in Marin County. He liked the works of George Orwell, Richard Aldington and Edmund Wilson. He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky and then from the whores of New Orleans. The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards. Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars. Most of the kooks were out of print, and no one wanted to read them any more and the people who had read the books had died or forgotten about them, but through the organic process of music the books had become virgins again. They wore their ancient copyrights like new maidenheads. I went to the bookstore in the afternoons after I got off work, during that terrible year of 1959. He had a kitchen in the back of the store and he brewed cups of thick Turkish coffee in a copper pan. I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end. He had a small room above the kitchen. It looked down on the bookstore and had Chinese screens in front of it. The room contained a couch, a glass cabinet with Chinese things in it and a table and three chairs. There was a tiny bathroom fastened like a watch fob to the room. I was sitting on a stool in the bookstore one afternoon reading a book that was in the shape of a chalice. The book had clear pages like gin, and the first page in the book read: Billy the Kid born November 23, 1859 in New York City The owner of the bookstore came up to me, and put his arm on my shoulder and said, "Would you like to get laid?" His voice was very kind. "No, " I said. "You're wrong, " he said, and then without saying anything else, he went out in front of the bookstore, and stopped a pair of total strangers, a man and a woman. He talked to them for a few moments. I couldn't hear what he was saying. He pointed at me in the bookstore. The woman nodded her head and then the man nodded his head. They came into the bookstore. I was embarrassed. I could not leave the bookstore because they were entering by the only door, so I decided to go upstairs and go to the toilet. I got up abruptly and walked to the back of the bookstore and went upstairs to the bathroom, and they followed after me. I could hear them on the stairs. I waited for a long time in the bathroom and they waited an equally long time in the other room. They never spoke. When I came out of the bathroom, the woman was lying naked on the couch, and the man was sitting in a chair with his hat on his lap. "Don't worry about him, " the girl said. "These things make no difference to him. He's rich. He has 3, 859 Rolls Royces." The girl was very pretty and her body was like a clear mountain river of skin and muscle flowing over rocks of bone and hidden nerves. "Come to me, " she said. "And come inside me for we are Aquarius and I love you." I looked at the man sitting in the chair. He was not smiling and he did not look sad. I took off my shoes and all my clothes. The man did not say a word. The girl's body moved ever so slightly from side to side. There was nothing else I could do for my body was like birds sitting on a telephone wire strung out down the world, clouds tossing the wires carefully. I laid the girl. It was like the eternal 59th second when it becomes a minute and then looks kind of sheepish. "Good, " the girl said, and kissed me on the face. The man sat there without speaking or moving or sending out any emotion into the room. I guess he was rich and owned 3, 859 Rolls Royces. Afterwards the girl got dressed and she and the man left. They walked down the stairs and on their way out, I heard him say his first words. "Would you like to go to Emie's for dinner?" "I don't know, " the girl said. "It's a little early to think about dinner. " Then I heard the door close and they were gone. I got dressed and went downstairs. The flesh about my body felt soft and relaxed like an experiment in functional background music. The owner of the bookstore was sitting at his desk behind the counter. "I'11 tell you what happened up there, " he said, in a beautiful anti-three-legged-crow voice, in an anti-dandelion side of the mountain voice. "What?"I said. "You fought in the Spanish Civil War. You were a young Communist from Cleveland, Ohio. She was a painter. A New York Jew who was sightseeing in the Spanish Civil War as if it were the Mardi Gras in New Orleans being acted out by Greek statues. "She was drawing a picture of a dead anarchist when you met her. She asked you to stand beside the anarchist and act as if you had killed him. You slapped her across the face and said something that would be embarrassing for me to repeat. You both fell very much in love. "Once while you were at the front she read Anatomy of Melancholy and did 349 drawings of a lemon. "Your love for each other was mostly spiritual.Neither one of you performed like millionaires in bed. "When Barcelona fell, you and she flew to England, and then took a ship back to New York. Your love for each other remained in Spain. It was only a war love. You loved only yourselves, loving each other in Spain during the war. On the Atlantic you were different toward each other and became every day more and more like people lost from each other. "Every wave on the Atlantic was like a dead seagull dragging its driftwood artillery from horizon to horizon. "When the ship bumped up against America, you departed without saying anything and never saw each other again. The last I heard of you, you were still living in Philadelphia. " "That's what you think happened up there?" I said. "Partly, " he said. "Yes, that's part of it. " He took out his pipe and filled it with tobacco and lit it. "Do you want me to tell you what else happened up there?" he said. "Go ahead." "You crossed the border into Mexico, " he said. "You rode your horse into a small town. The people knew who you were and they were afraid of you. They knew you had killed many men with that gun you wore at your side. The town itself was so small that it didn't have a priest. "When the rurales saw you, they left the town. Tough as they were, they did not want to have anything to do with you. The rurales left. You became the most powerful man in town. You were seduced by a thirteen-year-old girl, and you and she lived together in an adobe hut, and practically all you did was make love. "She was slender and had long dark hair. You made love standing, sitting, lying on the dirt floor with pigs and chickens around you. The walls, the floor and even the roof of the hut were coated with your sperm and her come. "You slept on the floor at night and used your sperm for a pillow and her come for a blanket. "The people in the town were so afraid of you that they could do nothing. "After a while she started going around town without any clothes on, and the people of the town said that it was not a good thing, and when you started going around without any clothes, and when both of you began making love on the back of your horse in the middle of the zocalo, the people of the town became so afraid that they abandoned the town. It's been abandoned ever since. "People won't live there. "Neither of you lived to be twenty-one. It was not neces- sary. "See, I do know what happened upstairs, " he said. He smiled at me kindly. His eyes were like the shoelaces of a harpsichord. I thought about what happened upstairs. "You know what I say is the truth, " he said. "For you saw it with your own eyes and traveled it with your own body. Finish the book you were reading before you were interrupted. I'm glad you got laid. " Once resumed the pages of the book began to speed up and turn faster and faster until they were spinning like wheels in the sea.

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GuardedHeart

AnAngelOfADifferentKind

Maybe I have wings That only need to stretch For you to see them The wings that you may see Are not of the brightest white But of black with hints of red I’m not the fairy light of innocence I don’t shine with unnatural brightness My thoughts are not the purest I’m an angel of a different kind Not the one that sings glory in high or praises Halleluiah You won’t meet me at St. Peters gates I’m a dark sort of being And I may not be the chosen guardian But I will still guard from afar Know that I will always be watching And praying for your well being And from me love will always be flowing A dark angelic being Misunderstood in living An angel of a different kind

angel

RichardBrautigan

Part4OfTroutFishingInAmerica

THE AUTOPSY OF TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA This is the autopsy of Trout Fishing in America as if Trout Fishing in America had been Lord Byron and had died in Missolonghi, Greece, and afterward never saw the shores of Idaho again, never saw Carrie Creek, Worsewick Hot Springs, Paradise Creek, Salt Creek and Duck Lake again. The Autopsy of Trout Fishing in America: "The body was in excellent state and appeared as one that had died suddenly of asphyxiation. The bony cranial vault was opened and the bones of the cranium were found very hard without any traces of the sutures like the bones of a person 80 years, so much so that one would have said that the cranium was formed by one solitary bone. . . . The meninges were attached to the internal walls of the cranium so firmly that while sawing the bone around the interior to detach the bone from the dura the strength of two robust men was not sufficient. . . . The cerebrum with cerebellum weighed about six medical pounds. The kidneys were very large but healthy and the urinary bladder was relatively small. " On May 2, 1824, the body of Trout Fishing in America left Missolonghi by ship destined to arrive in England on the evening of June 29, 1824. Trout Fishing in America's body was preserved in a cask holding one hundred-eighty gallons of spirits: 0, a long way from Idaho, a long way from Stanley Basin, Little Redfish Lake, the Big Lost River and from Lake Josephus and the Big Wood River.

america

RichardBrautigan

Part5OfTroutFishingInAmerica

WORSEWICK Worsewick Hot Springs was nothing fancy. Somebody put some boards across the creek. That was it. The boards dammed up the creek enough to form a huge bathtub there, and the creek flowed over the top of the boards, invited like a postcard to the ocean a thousand miles away. As I said Worsewick was nothing fancy, not like the places where the swells go. There were no buildings around. We saw an old shoe lying by the tub. The hot springs came down off a hill and where they flowed there was a bright orange scum through the sagebrush. The hot springs flowed into the creek right there at the tub and that' s where it was nice. We parked our car on the dirt road and went down and took off our clothes, then we took off the baby's clothes, and the deerflies had at us until we got into the water, and then they stopped. There was a green slime growing around the edges of the tub and there were dozens of dead fish floating in our bath. Their bodies had been turned white by death, like frost on iron doors. Their eyes were large and stiff. The fish had made the mistake of going down the creek too far and ending up in hot water, singing, "When you lose your money, learn to lose." We played and relaxed in the water. The green slime and the dead fish played and relaxed with us and flowed out over us and entwined themselves about us. Splashing around in that hot water with my woman, I began to get ideas, as they say. After a while I placed my body in such a position in the water that the baby could not see my hard-on. I did this by going deeper and deeper in the water, like a dinosaur, and letting the green slime and dead fish cover me over. My woman took the baby out of the water and gave her a bottle and put her back in the car. The baby was tired. It was really time for her to take a nap. My woman took a blanket out of the car and covered up the windows that faced the hot springs. She put the blanket ontop of the car and then lay rocks on the blanket to hold it in place. I remember her standing there by the car. Then she came back to the water, and the deerflies were at her, and then it was my turn. After a while she said, "I don't have my diaphragm with me and besides it wouldn't work in the water, anyway. I think it's a good idea if you don't come inside me. What do you think?" I thought this over and said all right. I didn't want any more kids for a long time. The green slime and dead fish were all about our bodies. I remember a dead fish floated under her neck. I waited for it to come up on the other side, and it came up on the other side. Worsewick was nothing fancy. Then I came, and just cleared her in a split secondlike an airplane in the movies, pulling out of a nosedive and sail- ing over the roof of a school. My sperm came out into the water, unaccustomed to the light, and instantly it became a misty, stringy kind of thing and swirled out like a falling star, and I saw a dead fishcome forward and float into my sperm, bending it in the middle. His eyes were stiff like iron.

america

RichardBrautigan

Part6OfTroutFishingInAmerica

THE HUNCHBACK TROUT The creek was made narrow by little green trees that grew too close together. The creek was like 12, 845 telephone booths in a row with high Victorian ceilings and all the doors taken off and all the backs of the booths knocked out. Sometimes when I went fishing in there, I felt just like a telephone repairman, even though I did not look like one. I was only a kid covered with fishing tackle, but in some strange way by going in there and catching a few trout, I kept the telephones in service. I was an asset to society. It was pleasant work, but at times it made me uneasy. It could grow dark in there instantly when there were some clouds in the sky and they worked their way onto the sun. Then you almost needed candles to fish by, and foxfire in your reflexes. Once I was in there when it started raining. It was dark and hot and steamy. I was of course on overtime. I had that going in my favor. I caught seven trout in fifteen minutes. The trout in those telephone booths were good fellows. There were a lot of young cutthroat trout six to nine inches long, perfect pan size for local calls. Sometimes there were a few fellows, eleven inches or so--for the long dis- tance calls. I've always liked cutthroat trout. They put up a good fight, running against the bottom and then broad jumping. Under their throats they fly the orange banner of Jack the Ripper. Also in the creek were a few stubborn rainbow trout, sel- dom heard from, but there all the same, like certified pub- lic accountants. I'd catch one every once in a while. They were fat and chunky, almost as wide as they were long. I've heard those trout called "squire" trout. It used to take me about an hour to hitchhike to that creek. There was a river nearby. The river wasn't much. The creek was where I punched in. Leaving my card above the clock I'd punch out again when it was time to go home. I remember the afternoon I caught the hunchback trout. A farmer gave me a ride in a truck. He picked me up at a traffic signal beside a bean field and he never said a word to me. His stopping and picking me up and driving me down the road was as automatic a thing to him as closing the barn door, nothing need be said about it, but still I was in motion traveling thirty-five miles an hour down the road, watching houses and groves of trees go by, watching chickens and mailboxes enter and pass through my vision. Then I did not see any houses for a while. "This is where I get out, " I said. The farmer nodded his head. The truck stopped. "Thanks a lot, " I said. The farmer did not ruin his audition for the Metropolitan Opera by making a sound. He just nodded his head again. The truck started up. He was the original silent old farmer. A little while later I was punching in at the creek. I put my card above the clock and went into that long tunnel of telephone booths. I waded about seventy-three telephone booths in. I caught two trout in a little hole that was like a wagon wheel. It was one of my favorite holes, and always good for a trout or two. I always like to think of that hole as a kind of pencil sharpener. I put my reflexes in and they came back out with a good point on them. Over a period of a couple of years, I must have caught fifty trout in that hole, though it was only as big as a wagon wheel. I was fishing with salmon eggs and using a size 14 single egg hook on a pound and a quarter test tippet. The two trout lay in my creel covered entirely by green ferns ferns made gentle and fragile by the damp walls of telephone booths. The next good place was forty-five telephone booths in. The place was at the end of a run of gravel, brown and slip- pery with algae. The run of gravel dropped off and disap- peared at a little shelf where there were some white rocks. One of the rocks was kind of strange. It was a flat white rock. Off by itself from the other rocks, it reminded me of a white cat I had seen in my childhood. The cat had fallen or been thrown off a high wooden side- walk that went along the side of a hill in Tacoma, Washing- ton. The cat was lying in a parking lot below. The fall had not appreciably helped the thickness of the cat, and then a few people had parked their cars on the cat. Of course, that was a long time ago and the cars looked dif- ferent from the way they look now. You hardly see those cars any more. They are the old cars. They have to get off the highway because they can't keep up. That flat white rock off by itself from the other rocks reminded me of that dead cat come to lie there in the creek, among 12, 845 telephone booths. I threw out a salmon egg and let it drift down over that rock and WHAM! a good hit! and I had the fish on and it ran hard downstream, cutting at an angle and staying deep and really coming on hard, solid and uncompromising, and then the fish jumped and for a second I thought it was a frog. I'd never seen a fish like that before. God-damn ! What the hell! The fish ran deep again and I could feel its life energy screaming back up the line to my hand. The line felt like sound. It was like an ambulance siren coming straight at me, red light flashing, and then going away again and then taking to the air and becoming an air-raid siren. The fish jumped a few more times and it still looked like a frog, but it didn't have any legs. Then the fish grew tired and sloppy, and I swung and splashed it up the surface of the creek and into my net. The fish was a twelve-inch rainbow trout with a huge hump on its back. A hunchback trout. The first I'd ever seen. The hump was probably due to an injury that occurred when the trout was young. Maybe a horse stepped on it or a tree fell over in a storm or its mother spawned where they were building a bridge. There was a fine thing about that trout. I only wish I could have made a death mask of him. Not of his body though, but of his energy. I don't know if anyone would have understood his body. I put it in my creel. Later in the afternoon when the telephone booths began to grow dark at the edges, I punched out of the creek and went home. I had that hunchback trout for dinner. Wrapped in cornmeal and fried in butter, its hump tasted sweet as the kisses of Esmeralda.

america

RichardBrautigan

Part7OfTroutFishingInAmerica

THE PUDDING MASTER OF STANLEY BASIN Tree, snow and rock beginnings, the mountain in back of the lake promised us eternity, but the lake itself was filled with thousands of silly minnows, swimming close to the shore and busy putting in hours of Mack Sennett time. The minnows were an Idaho tourist attraction. They should have been made into a National Monument. Swimming close to shore, like children they believed in their own im- mortality . A third-year student in engineering at the University of Montana attempted to catch some of the minnows but he went about it all wrong. So did the children who came on the Fourth of July weekend. The children waded out into the lake and tried to catch the minnows with their hands. They also used milk cartons and plastic bags. They presented the lake with hours of human effort. Their total catch was one minnow. It jumped out of a can full of water on their table and died under the table, gasp- ing for watery breath while their mother fried eggs on the Coleman stove. The mother apologized. She was supposed to be watching the fish --THIS IS MY EARTHLY FAILURE-- holding the dead fish by the tail, the fish taking all the bows like a young Jewish comedian talking about Adlai Stevenson. The third-year student in engineering at the University of Montana took a tin can and punched an elaborate design of holes in the can, the design running around and around in circles, like a dog with a fire hydrant in its mouth. Then he attached some string to the can and put a huge salmon egg and a piece of Swiss cheese in the can. After two hours of intimate and universal failure he went back to Missoula, Montana. The woman who travels with me discovered the best way to catch the minnows. She used a large pan that had in its bottom the dregs of a distant vanilla pudding. She put the pan in the shallow water along the shore and instantly, hun- dreds of minnows gathered around. Then, mesmerized by the vanilla pudding, they swam like a children's crusade into the pan. She caught twenty fish with one dip. She put the pan full of fish on the shore and the baby played with the fish for an hour. We watched the baby to make sure she was just leaning on them a little. We didn't want her to kill any of them be- cause she was too young. Instead of making her furry sound, she adapted rapidly to the difference between animals and fish, and was soon making a silver sound. She caught one of the fish with her hand and looked at it for a while. We took the fish out of her hand and put it back into the pan. After a while she was putting the fish back by herself. Then she grew tired of this. She tipped the pan over and a dozen fish flopped out onto the shore. The children's game and the banker's game, she picked up those silver things, one at a time, and put them back in the pan. There was still a little water in it. The fish liked this. You could tell. When she got tired of the fish, we put them back in the lake, and they were all quite alive, but nervous. I doubt if they will ever want vanilla pudding again.

america

RichardBrautigan

Part8OfTroutFishingInAmerica

A RETURN TO THE COVER OF THIS BOOK Dear Trout Fishing in America: I met your friend Fritz in Washington Square. He told me to tell you that his case went to a jury and that he was acquit- ted by the jury. He said that it was important for me to say that his case went to a jury and that he was acquitted by the jury, said it again. He looked in good shape. He was sitting in the sun. There's an old San Francisco saying that goes: "It's better to rest in Washington Square than in the California Adult Authority. " How are things in New York? Yours, "An Ardent Admirer" Dear Ardent Admirer: It's good to hear that Fritz isn't in jail. He was very wor- ried about it. The last time I was in San Francisco, he told me he thought the odds were 10-1 in favor of him going away. I told him to get a good lawyer. It appears that he followed my advice and also was very lucky. That's always a good combination. You asked about New York and New York is very hot. I'm visiting some friends, a young burglar and his wife. He's unemployed and his wife is working as a cocktail wait- ress. He's been looking for work but I fear the worst. It was so hot last night that I slept with a wet sheet wrapped around myself, trying to keep cool. I felt like a mental patient. I woke up in the middle of the night and the room was filled with steam rising off the sheet, and there was jungle stuff, abandoned equipment and tropical flowers, on the floor and on the furniture. I took the sheet into the bathroom and plopped it into the tub and turned the cold water on it. Their dog came in and started barking at me. The dog barked so loud that the bathroom was soon filled with dead people. One of them wanted to use my wet sheet for a shroud. I said no, and we got into a big argument over it and woke up the Puerto Ricans in the next apartment, and they began pounding on the walls. The dead people all left in a huff. "We know when we're not wanted, " one of them said. "You're damn tootin'," I said. I've had enough. I' m going to get out of New York. Tomorrow I'm leaving for Alaska. I'm going to find an ice-cold creek near the Arctic where that strange beautiful moss grows and spend a week with the grayling. My address will be, Trout Fishing in Ameri- ca, c/o General Delivery, Fairbanks, Alaska. Your friend, Trout Fishing in America THE LAKE JOSEPHUS DAYS We left Little Redfish for Lake Josephus, traveling along the good names--from Stanley to Capehorn to Seafoam to the Rapid River, up Float Creek, past the Greyhound Mine and then to Lake Josephus, and a few days after that up the trail to Hell-diver Lake with the baby on my shoulders and a good limit of trout waiting in Hell-diver. Knowing the trout would wait there like airplane tickets for us to come, we stopped at Mushroom Springs and had a drink of cold shadowy water and some photographs taken of the baby and me sitting together on a log. I hope someday we'll have enough money to get those pic- tures developed. Sometimes I get curious about them, won- dering if they will turn out all right. They are in suspension now like seeds in a package. I'll be older when they are de- veloped and easier to please. Look there's the baby ! Look there's Mushroom Springs ! Look there's me ! I caught the limit of trout within an hour of reaching Hell- diver, and my woman, in all the excitement of good fishing, let the baby fall asleep directly in the sun and when the baby woke up, she puked and I carried her back down the trail. My woman trailed silently behind, carrying the rods and the fish. The baby puked a couple more times, thimblefuls of gentle lavender vomit, but still it got on my clothes, and her face was hot and flushed. We stopped at Mushroom Springs. I gave her a small drink of water, not too much, and rinsed the vomit taste out of her mouth. Then I wiped the puke off my clothes and for some strange reason suddenly it was a perfect time, there at Mushroom Springs, to wonder whatever happened to the Zoot suit. Along with World War II and the Andrews Sisters, the Zoot suit had been very popular in the early 40s. I guess they were all just passing fads. A sick baby on the trail down from Hell-diver, July 1961, is probably a more important question. It cannot be left to go on forever, a sick baby to take her place in the galaxy, among the comets, bound to pass close to the earth every 173 years. She stopped puking after Mushroom Springs, and I carried her back down along the path in and out of the shadows and across other nameless springs, and by the time we got down to Lake Josephus, she was all right. She was soon running around with a big cutthroat trout in her hands, carrying it like a harp on her way to a concert-- ten minutes late with no bus in sight and no taxi either

america

RichardBrautigan

Part9OfTroutFishingInAmerica

SANDBOX MINUS JOHN DILLINGER EQUALS WHAT? Often I return to the cover of Trout Fishing in America. I took the baby and went down there this morning. They were watering the cover with big revolving sprinklers. I saw some bread lying on the grass. It had been put there to feed the pigeons. The old Italians are always doing things like that. The bread had been turned to paste by the water and was squashed flat against the grass. Those dopey pigeons were waiting until the water and grass had chewed up the bread for them, so they wouldn't have to do it themselves. I let the baby play in the sandbox and I sat down on a bench and looked around. There was a beatnik sitting at the other end -of the bench. He had his sleeping bag beside him and he was eating apple turnovers. He had a huge sack of apple turn- overs and he was gobbling them down like a turkey. It was probably a more valid protest than picketing missile bases. The baby played in the sandbox. She had on a red dress and the Catholic church was towering up behind her red dress. There was a brick john between her dress and the church. It was there by no accident. Ladies to the left and gents to the right. A red dress, I thought. Wasn't the woman who set John Dillinger up for the FBI wearing a red dress? They called her "The Woman in Red. " It seemed to me that was right. It was a red dress, but so far, John Dillinger was nowhere in sight. my daughter played alone in the sandbox. Sandbox minus John Dillinger equals what? The beatnik went and got a drink of water from the fountain that was crucified on the wall of the brick john, more toward the gents than the ladies. He had to wash all those apple turn- overs down his throat. There were three sprinklers going in the park. There was one in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue and one to the side of him and one just behind him. They were all turning in circles. I saw Benjamin Franklin standing there patiently through the water. The sprinkler to the side of Benjamin Franklin hit the left- hand tree. It sprayed hard against the trunk and knocked some leaves down from the tree, and then it hit the center tree, sprayed hard against the trunk and more leaves fell. Then it sprayed against Benjamin Franklin, the water shot out to the sides of the stone and a mist drifted down off the water. Ben- jamin Franklin got his feet wet. The sun was shining down hard on me. The sun was bright and hot. After a while the sun made me think of my own dis- comfort. The only shade fell on the beatnik. The shade came down off the Lillie Hitchcock Colt statue of some metal fireman saving a metal broad from a mental fire. The beatnik now lay on the bench and the shade was two feet longer than he was. A friend of mine has written a poem about that statue. God- damn, I wish he would write another poem about that statue, SO it would give me some shade two feet longer than my body. I was right about "The Woman in Red, " because ten min- utes later they blasted John Dillinger down in the sandbox. The sound of the machine-gun fire startled the pigeons and they hurried on into the church. My daughter was seen leaving in a huge black car shortly after that. She couldn't talk yet, but that didn't make any dif- ference. The red dress did it all. John Dillinger's body lay half in and half out of the sand- box, more toward the ladies than the gents. He was leaking blood like those capsules we used to use with oleomargarine, in those good old days when oleo was white like lard. The huge black car pulled out and went up the street, bat- light shining off the top. It stopped in front of the ice-cream parlor at Filbert and Stockton. An agent got out and went in and bought two hundred double-decker ice-cream cones. He needed a wheelbarrow to get them back to the car.

america

EllaWheelerWilcox

SongOfAmerica

And now, when poets are singing Their songs of olden days, And now, when the land is ringing With sweet Centennial lays, My muse goes wandering backward, To the groundwork of all these, To the time when our Pilgrim Fathers Came over the winter seas. The sons of a mighty kingdom, Of a cultured folk were they; Born amidst pomp and splendor, Bred in it day by day. Children of bloom and beauty, Reared under skies serene, Where the daisy and hawthorne blossomed, And the ivy was always green. And yet, for the sake of freedom, For a free religious faith, They turned from home and people, And stood face to face with death. They turned from a tyrant ruler, And stood on the new world's shore, With a waste of waters behind them, And a waste of land before. O, men of a great Republic; Of a land of untold worth; Of a nation that has no equal Upon God's round green earth: I hear you sighing and crying Of the hard, close times at hand; What think you of those old heroes, On the rock 'twixt sea and land? The bells of a million churches Go ringing out to-night, And the glitter of palace windows Fills all the land with light; And there is the home and college, And here is the feast and ball, And the angels of peace and freedom Are hovering over all. They had no church, no college, No banks, no mining stock; They had but the waste before them, The sea, and Plymouth Rock. But there in the night and tempest, With gloom on every hand, They laid the first foundation Of a nation great and grand. There were no weak repinings, No shrinking from what might be, But with their brows to the tempest, And with their backs to the sea, They planned out a noble future, And planted the corner stone Of the grandest, greatest republic, The world has ever known. O women in homes of splendor, O lily-buds frail and fair, With fortunes upon your fingers, And milk-white pearls in your hair: I hear you longing and sighing For some new, fresh delight; But what of those Pilgrim mothers On that December night? I hear you talking of hardships, I hear you moaning of loss; Each has her fancied sorrow, Each bears her self-made cross. But they, they had only their husbands, The rain, the rock, and the sea, Yet, they looked up to God and blessed Him, And were glad because they were free. O grand old Pilgrim heroes, O souls that were tried and true, With all of our proud possessions We are humbled at thought of you: Men of such might and muscle, Women so brave and strong, Whose faith was fixed as the mountain, Through a night so dark and long. We know of your grim, grave errors, As husbands and as wives; Of the rigid bleak ideas That starved your daily lives; Of pent-up, curbed emotions, Of feelings crushed, suppressed, That God with the heart created In every human breast; We know of that little remnant Of British tyranny, When you hunted Quakers and witches, And swumg them from a tree; Yet back to a holy motive, To live in the fear of God, To a purpose, high, exalted, To walk where martyrs trod, We can trace your gravest errors; Your aim was fixed and sure, And e'en if your acts were fanatic, We know your hearts were pure. You lived so near to heaven, You over-reached your trust, And deemed yourselves creators, Forgetting you were but dust. But we with our broader visions, With our wider realm of thought, I often think would be better If we lived as our fathers taught. Their lives seemed bleak and rigid, Narrow, and void of bloom; Our minds have too much freedom, And conscience too much room. They over-reached in duty, They starved their hearts for the right; We live too much in the senses, We bask too long in the light. They proved by their clinging to Him The image of God in man; And we, by our love of license, Strengthen a Darwin's plan. But bigotry reached its limit, And license must have its sway, And both shall result in profit To those of a latter day. With the fetters of slavery broken, And freedom's flag unfurled, Our nation strides onward and upward, And stands the peer of the world. Spires and domes and steeples, Glitter from shore to shore; The waters are white with commerce, The earth is studded with ore; Peace is sitting above us, And Plenty with laden hand, Wedded to sturdy Labor, Goes singing through the land. Then let each child of the nation, Who glories in being free, Remember the Pilgrim Fathers Who stood on the rock by the sea; For there in the rain and tempest Of a night long passed away, They sowed the seeds of a harvest We gather in sheaves to-day.

america

UdiahwitnesstoYah

TheDeclarationOfIndependenceAmericaAmericaAmericaAmericaAmerica

Once a shiny nation was established ‘cross the sea Smelted out of blood and sweat, to guarantee all men be free Escaping religious tyranny, they traveled to a new land so That their future generations could worship God you know As the promises of freedom did themselves unwind The colonies together, forged a new documental mind They appealed to the Supreme Judge, The Creator their fathers knew Asking The Divine Providence, for the protection due They sent to all concerned, a great message far and wide Just how the King of Britain, was raping liberties for pride They'd asked only for equality, entitled under Nature's God Some Represent to Parliament, for laws considered odd But when the document was given its final show The Colonial Congress, decided compromise would flow Stripping the Declaration of one, very justifiable act To obtain unanimous vote, left slavery intact The great Revolution, as it soon came to be called Brought new hope to the free world, its being oceanic walled But soon was the Confederation, in dire need of something new A stronger central government, with constitution too In The Constitution, many forefathers did frame The working of government and our protection from the same Being left within all there still stood, human slavery at the back Which God himself would not approve, and no one would attack Some would say it was strange, that fifty years to the day Jefferson and Adams died, on the Fourth of July God's way Be it eighty seven years later, Gettysburg Battlefield lay dead Where many men consecrated, the land in their blood red Since the fourth of sixty, our flag has carried fifty The states in which we reside, twenty-twelve marks one-fifty From the start of that great Civil War, that we here too must fight a new Because injustice has been done, Rights for the unborn too To compromise may seem the best to leave it lay at rest But to The Lord of Heaven, He'll place you to His test < br> When reading The Declaration of Independence, I was amazed at the four references made to the Supreme Being. I found it quite interesting that this document written by Thomas Jefferson, with minor changes made by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams contained the words: Nature's God, Creator, Supreme Judge and Divine Providence (notice the capitalization referring to a specific one) . It was addressed to the world but made its appeal to the Supreme Judge (not the king of England nor The Pope, but someone higher) . After more minor changes by the delegates, including deleting a section condemning slavery, it was unanimously approved. Just think, thousands of lives could have been saved (i.e. no Civil War) along with a totally free Union, if that section would have remained and not been compromised just to get a unanimous vote. Does not the same thing happen today? Does not the party with morals continue to compromise with the idiots? If the idiots wish for chaos, welfare, etc... Let them do it elsewhere, No More Compromising! < br> america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america america

america

RosannaEleanorLeprohon

TheEmigrantsAddressToAmerica

All hail to thee, noble and generous Land! With thy prairies boundless and wide, Thy mountains that tower like sentinels grand, Thy lakes and thy rivers of pride! Thy forests that hide in their dim haunted shades New flowers of loveliness rare— Thy fairy like dells and thy bright golden glades, Thy warm skies as Italy’s fair. Here Plenty has lovingly smiled on the soil, And ’neath her sweet, merciful reign The brave and long suff’ring children of toil Need labor no longer in vain. I ask of thee shelter from lawless harm, Food—raiment—and promise thee now, In return, the toil of a stalwart arm, And the sweat of an honest brow. But think not, I pray, that this heart is bereft Of fond recollections of home; That I e’er can forget the dear land I have left In the new one to which I have come. Oh no! far away in my own sunny isle Is a spot my affection worth, And though dear are the scenes that around me now smile, More dear is the place of my birth! There hedges of hawthorn scent the sweet air, And, thick as the stars of the night, The daisy and primrose, with flow’rets as fair, Gem that soil of soft verdurous light. And there points the spire of my own village church, That long has braved time’s iron power, With its bright glitt’ring cross and ivy wreathed porch— Sure refuge in sorrow’s dark hour! Whilst memory lasts think not e’er from this breast Can pass the fond thoughts of my home: No! I ne’er can forget the land I have left In the new one to which I have come!

america

HerbertNehrlich

TheFallOfAmerica

McCain, McCain, you are running in vain! And you are in this national drama, how hillariously (!) funny and a little insane, cheer the pigmented warrior Obama. In the background old Bill, who is over the hill lusts to get a new student like 'winsky, with a Cuban cigar and a muffin to fill like a film by director Klaus Kinski. And I say, take the lot and fly up to the moon blast the gangsters into smithereens, we don't need here on earth, a demented baboon nor a humper who's searching for queens. Let the first who has cast his own spell on the land be the chief and commander for all it won't matter a bit as we do understand very soon this great country will fall.

america