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Literature Text
As I sit under a broken sky with a look-out view of New York City, writing poetry in this century of forgotten poetry, with my biblical book of Walt Whitman serving as a paperweight, I'm trying to figure out what it means to be an American, with the whole nation ready to ignite like a barrel full of gas fumes, with ire and divisions, addictions and debts; with all these natural liberties under siege by wall street police and militarized prudes, with cities of forced vagrancy and corporate war states and walls, walls, walls.
Whatever being American means, it doesn’t have much to do with a flag or a pledge —any damn fool can salute a flag.
Perhaps it has more to do with never perishing from the Earth —unrestrained by imagination, limitless in energy; watching the rise of the Mannahatta skyline as it knocks on the floor of heaven; creating legends out of everyday life, and myths from electric light —the Mother of Exiles, bohemian love, underground beats, marijuana Bebop.
Or perhaps it’s something more cruel: the Gotham people corrupted by excess and at war with nature, overestimating mankind’s own power, Emma Goldman’s deportation papers, Irish rioters burning down black orphanages, Hamilton wounded on the heights of Weehawken, the burning effigies of Lincoln, reservation poverty, demolished ghettos, prison cities, Wounded Knee.
What does it mean to be American? Wrestling with that question, I get caught up in newspaper cut-ups, dusty old reads, things heard about and never seen. But what about me? What do I think?
I think America is a guitar with a broken neck that somehow through magical intellect has been glued and screwed back together, and now it plays more beautifully than ever before. America is a bottle of bootleg and a sack of sunshine. It’s oil that's as cheap as apple juice, and streets lit up with endless head lights.
But sometimes I think America is so mixed-up, when progress is in my coffee cup, and tradition makes my sugar; when the impulse to be a free people is corrupted by the impulse to conform —a strange brew of love and infamy, of historic prides and present shames; when dignified people still have to fight the good fight to overcome all indignities.
Then I remember, this is the way it’s always been. We leave a little of what we love behind for the promise of something never done before; and in this, this perpetual transformation, this pursuit of the answer is the answer. We are that nation that is never content, but always strives and strives and strives to overcome.
Whatever being American means, it must be just that, something paradoxical and incomplete; something about being at peace, knowing you can say and do and be as you want so long as you are willing to fight for it.
Whatever being American means, it doesn’t have much to do with a flag or a pledge —any damn fool can salute a flag.
Perhaps it has more to do with never perishing from the Earth —unrestrained by imagination, limitless in energy; watching the rise of the Mannahatta skyline as it knocks on the floor of heaven; creating legends out of everyday life, and myths from electric light —the Mother of Exiles, bohemian love, underground beats, marijuana Bebop.
Or perhaps it’s something more cruel: the Gotham people corrupted by excess and at war with nature, overestimating mankind’s own power, Emma Goldman’s deportation papers, Irish rioters burning down black orphanages, Hamilton wounded on the heights of Weehawken, the burning effigies of Lincoln, reservation poverty, demolished ghettos, prison cities, Wounded Knee.
What does it mean to be American? Wrestling with that question, I get caught up in newspaper cut-ups, dusty old reads, things heard about and never seen. But what about me? What do I think?
I think America is a guitar with a broken neck that somehow through magical intellect has been glued and screwed back together, and now it plays more beautifully than ever before. America is a bottle of bootleg and a sack of sunshine. It’s oil that's as cheap as apple juice, and streets lit up with endless head lights.
But sometimes I think America is so mixed-up, when progress is in my coffee cup, and tradition makes my sugar; when the impulse to be a free people is corrupted by the impulse to conform —a strange brew of love and infamy, of historic prides and present shames; when dignified people still have to fight the good fight to overcome all indignities.
Then I remember, this is the way it’s always been. We leave a little of what we love behind for the promise of something never done before; and in this, this perpetual transformation, this pursuit of the answer is the answer. We are that nation that is never content, but always strives and strives and strives to overcome.
Whatever being American means, it must be just that, something paradoxical and incomplete; something about being at peace, knowing you can say and do and be as you want so long as you are willing to fight for it.
Literature
A Nation Divided.
We are the United States, or so it may seem,
To the many pursuing their American dream.
The principles of freedom are at our core and at our heart.
But the freedom to be different is what keeps drifting us apart.
We spend our days divided, into groups, clichés, clusters,
That our melting pot has lost its distinct allure and luster.
And while our differences make our country a more interesting place,
It is these differences that we ourselves fail to embrace.
This country we call the land of the free
Is only so if everybody in it acts and thinks just like me.
But as we alienate another from living life a different way,
We b
Literature
Free Information
I might be God, got
discs burning
in the furnace. more discs
than Amoeba. more dope
than a trap house. Red flags
waving like a war march,
kids got masks on and they're all plastic.
2016. Got Melanie working on the night shift.
2015. got Helen to talk to me like a wall.
2014. Jade still hides her wrists
like she's swimming in Shibuya.
Keep the razor in her back.
2013. Jo went 180 on me.
air in Dorval stays black,
wind shifts, feeling like Clark.
she stays dead with a new fella,
bus stays skipping on me.
I flex like I have gold teeth
and more rubber in the trash.
watching 'gram, screaming
nightmares coming out the screen,
waiting for my h
Literature
from here to christian apology
in the end i break my teeth on the cyanide almond.
the capacity for evil is trivial and irreducible.
it is a rock in the bloodstream,
it tumbles in the purifier and never gets out.
no you can't wash this out. you can scrub & scratch yourself
into a corner through little transgressions.
they say loitering on the edge heightens one's senses
to things like pastel bricks of scarfwork
& liquor store workers who remember your name.
they say hanging up on scam calls will
cost you an earthquake. is this an earthquake?
what little love there is
slinks gently like a beanstalk
wilting on the steel fen
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Written by Frank Jaspers.
What does it mean to be an American? The answer is the pursuit of an answer.
This is a prose poem, although I might say it is an essay poem like the liner notes to an old Dylan vinyl or something.
What does it mean to be an American? The answer is the pursuit of an answer.
This is a prose poem, although I might say it is an essay poem like the liner notes to an old Dylan vinyl or something.
© 2016 - 2024 Frank-Jaspers
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You ask the real questions? Even growing up in America my whole life sometimes I don't know what it truly means to be "American" because America is different for everyone.
I like the metaphor usage in this poem and the overall tone of the piece. Has to be one of my favorite works by you yet!
I like the metaphor usage in this poem and the overall tone of the piece. Has to be one of my favorite works by you yet!