Crossing Nation


Under silver wing
San Francisco’s towers sprouting
thru thin gas clouds,
Tamalpais black-breasted above Pacific azure
Berkeley hills pine-covered below
Dr Leary in his brown house scribing Independence
Declaration
typewriter at window
silver panorama in natural eyeball

Sacramento valley rivercourse’s Chinese
dragonflames licking green flats north-hazed
State Capitol metallic rubble, dry checkered fields
to Sierras – past Reno, Pyramid Lake’s
blue Altar, pure water in Nevada sands’
brown wasteland scratched by tires

Jerry Rubin arrested! Beaten, jailed,
coccyx broken
Leary out of action “a public menace…
persons of tender years…immature
judgement…pyschiatric examination…”
I. e. Shut up or Else Loonybin or Slam

Leroi on bum gun rap, $7,000
lawyer fees, years’ negotiations
SPOCK GUILTY headlined temporary, Joan Baez’
paramour husband Dave Harris to Gaol
Dylan silent on politics, & safe
having a baby, a man
Cleaver shot at, jail’d, maddened, parole revoked,

Vietnam War flesh-heap grows higher,
blood splashing down the mountains of bodies
on to Cholon’s sidewalks
Blond boys in airplane seats fed technicolor
Murderers advance w/ Death-chords
Earplugs in, steak on plastic
served Eyes up to the Image

What do I have to lose if America falls?
my body? my neck? my personality?

June 19, 1968


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Crossing Nation