“The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”
—Walt Whitman

FL

Gazing down nereids I, absent on some swelling shore,
From above again by the soft distance? Up do they look?
Thin-bronze latino familias, their silken hair and linen,
Wool and Tassels Yahwe-
Sun so bright so-can’t be seen, diadems,
heavenly host, etc
Dissipates. The best of the orients skyscrapers almost
Lush paved palm suburbs
There’s not swamp, inland overgrowths
Freedom and coming to die
A few courtyards from—
Spanish moss boas draping dark and light
Strange whispering windows.

MT

There’s hope here,
Newness and oldness,
Your Psychedelic cowboy’s expanse uniquely—
Real cowboy’s (where there’s no town):
Straight, tall and wide.
Crazies, Yellowstone Beartooth Bitteroots
Dust and bright pine
Beige always spring-felt green for
Black Angus June
And helicopter star-spangled July.
Same drunks molding here, as
Everywhere, but beauty-
Paradise of paradises
Inaccessed and perfect for living.
There is treasure somewhere— here
Clouds covering mountains with
Familiar shawls,
Granite, sapphires, emerald-eye lakes
With the spit of oil camps.
Glacial Space and eastern never ending plains of
Sly integrity.
There is coal in every diamond;
Small house, big house,
Shed hunters, granolas, cowgirls and dandies:
A whole/new experiment!
No empty souls under the big sky.

WY

Cancerous expanse of
Celestial pallor, desolation
Of sleek angel’s treeless— bliss
Magma ? Warm sulfur’s bubbles
Red rock, southwest, northwest great melted plain
White and frostbit: Simple, honestly
Man rough and resplendent
With the boundless integrity of the cowman,
Of Mavericks.
Man old here and worn leather
Lonesome drugs dilapidate, Tetons
A glorious apparition,
Cliffborne canyons, high passes herbal mountains,
Gurgling (small) powder rivers a leafs last refuge,
Concrete mill towers empty but for starlings.
Here golden hair held for us sometimes sun and
Mist— even small rains tinted to greater greens.
High desert greens stretches,
Big straw moon rising
Alone, light escaping
Petrol trumpets figuring these
Badland spires, clean land of fugitive desires,
There’s no thievin’ when everyone armed,
And shots are occasionally fired.
Reservoirs for lakes
Bibles for study,
Summers burn all the greater,
What joy to be the same old west stagnant:
She swims high holy.

CO

Natives roamed,
We who want something,
Let us grow close
And holyish,
Prayers for the prayer and prayed,
Too beautiful you, a diadem oversewn
Strewn front range of flatiron sky scrape
Space, sky, flight paths
West’s highest, smallest something from afar
Close sprawling, Kansas plains,
Modern man’s range full and present—caution;
Fiends, friends, ranchers zombies new rich,
Old two lone south spanish peaks- sovereigns of love,
Yellow springs a clean mount and plain split: north to south
Plains to peaks and evelation’s vacuum
And device of whiteness.
Mustangs over pavement’s
Quick fade to brush, space and man almost free
Of man never escaping
I-25 construction’s grey stripe;
Hotels for the aborted hallucinogenic west.
Green culdesac hills somehow half, natural bright, nature the grandest
Somewhere near Latina Silverado Platte butte.
Are heifers early risen smoked to sleep and
Quiet straw, quiet straw
Decay and the grandeur of your edges,
Where Pan’s timbrell's mute and singing sings:
God’s must have pulled these peaks
Covered them in pine—
And slept.

NM

You of a different county,
Or a mirage past,
Of people airy and almost refined
Caked custard-muddy bloody catholic feet.
Spanish, mission, what mission?,
Someone knows in Angel Fire..
Enchantment aqueous and arid
High desert Plateau’s fall cloudbusting to
Gorges, gangs,
Hatch-chili hearts and smiles.
Clay and burnt saplings, nails struck through all
Sangre de christo seco
Lavender-ochre, brush-fades
The sage pillow flats of sea of stray hills
Of soft kisses—the open sky.
America’s oldest, “One of God’s chosen”,
“Die Yuppies!”.
But who's here?
Lawrence’s cuckold ashes,
Desert bronze,
Dark souls long hidden ever lit in urns,
Awoken yet unstirring, cracks of earth
Lead the mestizo,
Burnt and cooked in seasons music,
Icy peaks of foreign summers circled by
Sapphire jays in hoods—
They never stop talking,
Opening planets,
Pueblo secrets from stars;
Bleeding happy earth,
Low cedar fields
Something troubled..
New age on every main and mind
Maybe there’s some truth—there is,
And maybe there’s some folly.
Sins, cigarette butts swallowed by mother
And her vast expanse of something.
Start with the sun
And all else follows.

TX

Salt of our west,
Salt of our south,
Marred thunderheads thrum
Spotting sheets of dappled brush, you surprise greenly.
Grain mills Gloria,
Rust water pulpits— perma-art
Elevator embankments reverent as anything;
A small towns exaltation with
Tumbleweeds down main street and
Townhouse flotsam to
Irrigation’s quick greens.
Everything’s wider,
Confederate Archipelago still strong ‘gainst entropy,
Ivory windmills more numerous than clouds, and larger you
Verdant south not let to rot,
With every last jaguar panther proud and shot.
Austin the first fully gentrified city (a Twitter city),
There are homeless sure, but their rabid delirium only diaspora—
Wandering slow from where to where— the eternal wandering color: even white!
From those temples razed millennial, blue foxes with holes
And the son of woman no
Midtown road work, (the river forks) but
In China construction’s through in a day,
But in China they sent us this darn card reader what’ya expect (it half works),
You drying to the sea on
Sam Houston’s interstate ramp pirrhourettes
And overpass nests.
Bloody damp south, and she’ll be bloody till the day she—
Calm sprawl of green mansion and green abandon,
A worthy skyline.
A calm embodied techless people
Latin black white Indian all chosen, calm people
Heavy night bass,
Drone and heavy bass,
Marihuana wafts,
Fast drivers, slow driving, infinite interstate, loops and parking lot plaza paradise,
The wise saloon.
Half dead junkie skinnied how are you living?
Marsh and dullness of your ends
You carry yourself open as the lone star—
From where comes your strength?

LA

Noir Soleil
Bleeding bright and dark with
Highway embankments and
Semi boxcars for hurricanes of memory.
Trumpet note bayou breath and your red river north’s empty clay
Violining dealerships for some nomadic
Ever heavy returning
Frogman Greek.
The whole south one injury law billboard.
Suits, garcias, cowboy hats,
Flamethrowers and you should call
The big blue sky the same as smoke,
Carjacking white cows and pelican
Roadways lined and peppered with
Rubber shrapnel armadillo carcass egret flight paths
Of your long drawn superior song.
Land of the Amazons,
A mud-mossy haunted place, of rotted perfumes,
Scraps of delicacies and lily flowers—Blanche
Where every lady American drag empties
Fertilizing a soil most fecund and overgreen of idol
Saints and folly.
Curdling mississippi,
Cardiac Cajuns, what oils ‘ll slide from you
As you transform, As you flip belly up.
Red stick
State school serendipity
The people outside your cities must have found some true rotted peace
To live wet and here.
Refineries,
Delicacies unspeakable,
Saint Joseph rooms
Everything named holy;
Isn’t that all America?
In spite itself,
Life life bursting from every cracked sidewalk—none smooth—
Bursting green and wayward string-purple flower flicking
A (self-proudly-proclaimed) third world country, just
Waiting to fall into the gulf big and easy.
Parishes instead county lines, I’d
Hate to build roads here,
Tall doors wafting white flower scent of
Blood, cacophonic, whirlpools of blood.
There is much good in the world,
(I heard an 11 yr old black-fleur-de-lis carjacker was killed)
And much nothing—
Still air and smoke that only climbs never
Still coming back before
There was blood.

MS

Simple stable ground,
Sullen dry
Calm thankful thankless
Faces,
Secret waterway wisemen’s curt wisdoms,
Quiet sleepy hot polite and peaceful
Hot tall greenery,
Black white white black green
Young sorts and sports collegiate of
Unnecessary learning.
Manners and kikis juxtaposed
In red brick regionals
Not too much crumble,
Tapering, propitiation and every eye dull or ignorant or soft or harsh
Awaiting something pure:
A blonde girl with black eyes.
We come to to forget ourselves and be bewildered by
The south, where man seems most at peace with his colors,
And where Elvis was born.

AL

Sweet branded home,
Sweet pride of the finest state (so they say)
Even greener even bluer even red
Wandering retardant stars
Not the paradise of god but wanting—hot calm bloody ordered south,
The same administration as all but more modest
Almost menial south of tailgater's glory.
Proud string virulent ephemeral red green black gossamer
South of the boring insect:
Pines, beautiful naked woman ridges
Idyllic every shade
Slowly rising from the sea calm and gentle Appalachia’s waves.
Crime begging to trick and be received, to be spoken to with eyes pure
You without Atlanta’s power,
You old white bearded delta man who knows Bosch,
You sweet home, you’re a vicar, vicarious,
South sundry humid airs, a Baptist continual,
An old baptism in muddy waters with
Water less muddy.

TN

Golden fisheye of god,
Why do your smoky hills have eyes?
You are the Tennessee river in its perfection,
It’s purple bluffs, its overflowing foliage.
Which way do you run
Perfect still, river house
Hollow tip memphis,
Fat pigeon forge mountain strip,
Mountain Dew fantasy.

VA

Sweet green holly Virginia
For lovers, chapel spires
Cows on slanted fields of
Loose cloud or steam hills.
People’s active and calm in
The ordered girdle of American intellect.
Noble tall not-too-tall presidential mountains,
Dominion gold orange faded gold columnar people’s
In folly forgotten—America true,
And true even your shape screams it;
Star spangled and piping cloudy Arcadia
Dairy cow and DC flower’s gay
Spread as your endless fracturing dales,
Black English other cities
Pale geodesics
Marble domes and pillars your toys
Amidst seas of putting greens—
Dappled Corinthian glory
Prunes your structures of every type, you
Banal healthy marvelous capital.

MD

Baltimore’s secrets
Great bridges and bays,
A port, a navy container ship,
Dirty medical ravens,
Deciduous lacrosse moshpit of
Chesapeake suburbia.

DE

Americas good and bad and stale
Ocean quick land.
White beaches,
Mustangs still run free;
Tax free,
Dragon bridge Delaware.

NJ

Sunoco shines spins and sputters from north to south
From trash to the finest preps.
New Jersey cities are a Newport,
And the rest one nice private school suburb,
Or township vibrating low,
Or the Sicilian Atlantic shore
With bored wealth and bright colored houses.

NY

The city chaos, hard metal concrete;
God's great joke:
Dope— white clad gin collared.
What is the church in a city (gothic clovers)? A whore’s a vacuum,
Touch the towers!, the glass, they are gold!
Made good of gold! Altars, underpasses gold!
Effortless and triumphant glittering dirty steel gold!:
Can’t we just stop for a second and kneel?— reflections,
To the greatest city ever in the world.
One of the earth’s evil places,
And a most holy recess of God's mind,
Tabac and cementing
Traffic cone medallions
Lavatorial, steam scaffold
Manhattan, the greatest structure known to man.
Quicksilver made to float shimmering on the skyline,
Quicksilver perpetual, eager to rape,
Streets that make eyes bleeding lust—
The Empire’s pike still the tallest (fuck Dubai and the world’s other plastic).
All the more human beauty and music
Of barely harnessed chaos here, in
New Amsterdam— New blessed canalic hell,
Where I know everyone’s pretty face.
Medieval city (the last) of moat, mortar,
And serpentine byway:
Your Incessant sound and siren of
Midtown where the rectilinear heaves termetic
Mounded of its own weight
Time folds at the bottom of hell and purgatory at times
Crystalizes. Dry, full
Montauk clean white sand spray
Green hills of the Hudson, Snowmobiles and Buffalo ‘66,
Come back to the city.

VT

Purple dappled mountain hills,
Pink river brush,
Barely we see the sky above you,
We inlets of branches,
Scarlet letters,
New England haunting when far from the sea.
Look, Walt Whitman lane,
Pines again, and beautiful sweeping Champlain.

NH

Sleepy white buildings even snow on a mountain,
Sleepy wigger,
Sleepy Mount Washington, free,
You are a surprise.
Towns warm empty stained with wood restaurants
And strange place hamlets.

ME

Inside an owl’s head,
Swiss lake Appalachia.
Gods black ocean, clean and crystalline
Fairytale ocean swirls and towering
Canadian rivers.
Clean people, wasps know how to tend,
Silver water,
Silver skies clean enough for seals and mass,
Moss for two, human behind the trees
Naked of genius; Victim’s trying for more
Overpasses with fences,
Misanthropic as Thoreau
And princely as of all New England.

CT

The city’s suburb,
Finance family capital,
The dregs of almost nice trees amtraked,
Mystic, Gatsby.

MI

Water, winter, Troy
Train wheel trucks
Construction and ever lost glory of techno song’s still bright—
Does America know everything good and musical and metal you made?
Pale peninsula green
With wolverine colors and look around the wood
That’s been left to sit and maybe, may be found gleaming
Light-skin diamonds,
Under viking copper, under great lakes that fall into the sky.

IL

Sand from somewhere,
Antennae doubled on the high black glass (red piping!)
Wandering wide rivers of Egypt,
A sea glistening clean and unmentioned.
Americas soil whispers Christ and Rome,
Pompei museums,
The aristocrats just want to fuck
Quiet— so do the commons,
Lust, Lust, Lust
The negros voice crooning from the continent’s every blade (now dark urges)
As it all bursts green there are fences for blades, blood for souls,
And private schools and public schools,|
And Wrigleyville.

OH

Crop lines, buried under snow, darkness, blue
Glistening glass vacuum of neon Erie,
Other cities, bone-thug opera singers,
Bball phenoms, hip-south, rich Columbus,
All connected brief and longing by
Beautiful Tutored Highways—Midwest, and
Big lots floating on Calvin’s loam still barely
Shivering and sitting heavy cold
Smoking factories,
Atop an A-frame.

IN

Hallowed be thy name,
Gary, Colts,
Glistening gold domes, Interstate semi-truck graveyard—
Our lady pronounced an American Way, a forgotten
Way of catholic football;
The rest silent and still: proud,
Where’s beatrice?
Dogs still walk.

WI

Cheese, wholesome and dirt-scrawny Milwaukee
Flat with a cross as a border as a niece, nice
Lake with trees almost swimming
Cornrows our young palms where fly
Oz grain elevators.
Foldout hills of heaven,
A case of Spotted cows
And Jesus, I trust you,
Our billboards need to fire our marketer, or not; They still remind us of
Birdsong occasionally turning the sky green.

MN

Fresh snow or warm rain—twins! purple midwest crown,
Certainly uncertain that it’s a man’s world. 3M
Reaped waterfalls of corny
Lake country peace, innocence (prince!)
North and dusty brick churches every block,
Duluth and Superior higher than the sky
With wolves and long haired sandwich shop vapor.
The world's royal lake’s deep green hands into itself like teeth.

SD

Infinite tilled black white lined soil,
Silent land, spacious land, can one live here so simply?
Blue skies gentle and sweeping. Complete and foggy
Silent, mumbling ripples of land,
Yes, minted ecstasy of the coming of the
End of the plains—Badland beauty— to elevation.