Crossing Nation

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