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Crossing Nation

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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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