I want so little: another leather boundBook, a gimlet with a lavender gin, breadSo good when I taste it I can tell youHow it’s made. I’d like us to rethinkWhat it is to be a nation. I’m in a mood about AmericaToday.

Let me be Another invisible, Used and forgotten and left To whatever narrow miseries I make for myself Without anybody asking What's wrong. Concern for my soul offends me....

I will not shoot myselfIn the head, and I will not shoot myselfIn the back, and I will not hang myselfWith a trashbag, and if I do, I promise you, I will not do itIn a police car while handcuffedOr in the jail cell of a townI only know the name ofBecause I have to drive through itTo get home.

When I kill me, I willDo it the same way most Americans do, I promise you: cigarette smokeOr a piece of meat on which I chokeOr so broke I freeze In one of these winters we keepCalling worst. I promise if you hearOf me dead anywhere nearA cop, then that cop killed me.

I’d like us to rethinkWhat it is to be a nation. I’m in a mood about AmericaToday.

I want you To heed that I'm still here Just beneath your skin and in Each organ The way anger dwells in a man Who studies the history of his nation.If I can't leave youDead, I'll haveYou vexed.

We do not recognize the bodyOf Emmett Till. We do not knowThe boy’s name nor the soundOf his mother wailing. We haveNever heard a mother wailing.We do not know the historyOf this nation in ourselves. WeDo not know the history of our-Selves on this planet becauseWe do not have to know whatWe believe we own.

There is the happiness you have And the happiness you deserve.

We few left who listen to the radio leaveOurselves available to surprise.