In solitude, I am swallowed by a host of Nebraska rattlers

so that I am carried through vast and lonely earth

stabbing desperately at evil flesh

and dreaming of hot coals in homesteads

In divine company I am the wind,

Chicago blusters breathing harsh life into

the wise,

the poor,

the cold.

In parlors, I am the brass spittoon 

and in my lungs I hold the unique obsoletion of the

sputtering American phonograph

juggling need and no-longer-need

In seams and stitches, I am holy and sick

I am coughing Irish Boston work-girls

I am beautiful twirling silk mid-tango

in love and crying, homeless and alive

In love I am man, I am woman, I am God

I feel ecstasy, sex, chafing of hot linen

I hear words of anger, reconciliation, contentment

New Orleans ferry lanterns tell me to dance with the coal shovel

In America I hear bop,

vulgar saxophone blown for the deaf and blind

I hear beggars crying, robbed blind by drugged fantasies

I hear the voice of reason spoiled and obscured

by hecklers and robber-barons

In the mountains I embrace the sky as my sister

And hot sticky syrup binds generations through

New England’s rattling old-man’s winter breath

and I love the trees as I cut them

and I love the trees as I hug them

In folklore, passed down by word of mouth

I implore the madman into preaching

I dissuade the cynic from murder of truth

I sweep away contradictions in the name of ecstasy

I sit in solitude,

I talk to God,

I have class,

I am beauty,

I am in love,

I hear the train whistle all the way down the river,

I fell trees, I love trees,

I am known on docks and in warm-lit alleys

I am man, I am woman, I am Human,

I am whole.