I wanted to share this, I wrote it ten years ago. I was on a Ginsberg kick. It is written in beat style and was inspired by to poems I read about America, one by Ginsberg, the other by Langston Hughes. I was trying to capture my mixture of love and sorrow for this wonderful country. I hope you like it. It's kinda long.



AMERICAN CACOPHONY - Roger Craton

Old white shepherds in Armani suits
tend sleeping herds. Unseated judges
roam highways and cities, search for new dreams
and catastrophies. Grumbling teamsters
share coffee with scab truckers in
stagnant, seventies throwback choke
and pukes at two a.m. Never ending Samsara
cycles of latest fashion trends, In Things
For Spring, swim over magazine covers.
Heroin Chic bimbos with food issues and dead eyes,
flirt, beckon, and shame tightlaced homemakers
who love Jesus and fold clothes, never noticing.
Conspiritorial whispers of "how they get you"
echo in supermarket aisles. Teachers do their
level best to not mention gods before impressionable
minds. Men take aim at percieved enemies,
villians of their private feature presentations. Elderly
Chinese men to Tai Chi exercises in city parks
with young, tatooed African musicians. Hungry Bikkhus
on cross country busses, crave cheeseburgers and
watch Tathagata in stunning sunrises in rocky New Mexico
deserts. Young Turks walk from state to state, slowly
starving. Hidden prophets whisper messages to shouting angry
mobs. Newlywed mothers fret over diets and daily serials
and make choices between going to the doctor or eating. Fathers
alienate their wive and become strangers to their children.
Tweakers snort, junkies stick in secret places, and fine young
american faces eat X and wave glow sticks. White-bread
collectives sing, happy meaningless songs and accrue sickening
debt on special days in self-congratulatory orgies. Brothers
screw over brothers. Friends come and go. Toddlers muddle
around, while old country barbers boast and complain about
things that don't concern them. False intellectuals reminisce
about T.V. shows as if they were real memories. Young ranchers
dream of city life, while harried accountants book cattle
drive vacations. A transient knows the grass is all the same
color. Subteraneans huddle around burning trash cans in winter,
desperate for warmth. Hard working sons and daughters
toil on ancestral fields. Happy couples flee to Sin City
to be married by THE KING. Middle-aged gym teachers
f*** fifteen year olds. A young football player takes
walking for granted. A blind blues man sings a song about
loving light. Wealthy pedagogues speak to hear their own voices.
Stoned students sleep at their desks. Upper-middle class
pricks bore strangers in airport bars. Brutalized Cherokee watch
tourists drive past in luxury cars. Migrant workers pick peaches
to sell in supermarkets they can't afford to shop in.
Underpaid servers bear humiliation for 2.15 an hour to
feed their children or go to the doctor, but not both. Well
dressed liars make their living meddling in private lives.
Children are stolen from their parents to meet quotas.
Uninformed voters push buttons next to familiar names or
symbols. Heavily dogmatic salesmen walk around dreaming,
making little progress. Bitter teens carve up their arms with razors
as a retribution against distracted parents. Babies have their
imaginations sucked out by electronic, zombie machine babysitters.
Red faced millionaires keel over from stress related illnesses.
Hopeful children read fantasies and grow. Jaded adults harbor
illusions and decay. This is my home. A place of Resident Evils
and Born Again Soul Winners. A field of reticent sheep and
ravenous wolves. Futurist dreamers walking hand-in-hand with
living relics. Skinner's Utopia reborn in commercials and
shopping malls. Orwell's London wearing an Uncle Sam costume.
The new Babylon of the Rastafari. A cacophony of loud
singing and patriotic nonsense. Bigoted old men arguing with
P.C. thugs over irrelevant foolishness. The Yardbirds ghost
whispering cautionary tales, playing sad music to mourn the
passing of our national integrity. A panorama of bustling
city life and dirty white houses, of surreal mountain ranges
and golden wheat fields dancing with the wind. Proud warriors
raising flags at personal Iwo Jimas. Peaceful visionaries gunned
down by ignorant cowards. A dirty rabble massed on a hill,
railing against the threat of the week. A dozen nonthinking
joiners in uniform beating a prone crackhead.
Three hundred million soft decendents of rugged pioneers.
Three hundred million voices singing praises to pretend liberty,
illusory domestic security,
and a dead, forgotten, common dream.
_________________

long yes, but i must admit, i was very much impressed.