The U.S.A. I Love

It's professional football games
where generals command,
helmeted warriors clash and battle,
speed is thrown against might,
and most of the damage is a few
multi-millionaires with concussions

It's multi-cultural porn mags with censored covers,
which cost the same as a mocha and pumpkin bread
at the Starbucks down the street;
There's always a Starbucks down the street
and I love that, too:
a familiar place and green mermaid in every city
that will be open and quality
at six o'clock in the morning in Medford, Oregon,
in Dallas, Texas,
and in Manhattan's Broadway district

I love the back-roads,
well-paved but barely taken:
the farms with modern tractors
and mammoth bales of hay,
cows grazing in quiet fields,
great trucks hauling many tons of timber,
trunk pressed into trunk,
all neatly fastened with titanic chains

I love the passionate environmentalists
when they complain
and remind us
of things like acid rain...
or say it all with the symbol of the giant sea-tortoise
as they did in Seattle,
where legions of tree-huggers
did peaceful battle with the riot-police
in their needed gas-masks
as downtown was bathed in brutal tear gas

I love snap-dragon flowers,
those brightly diverse survivors
that grow by the side of dry roads,
in forgotten cemeteries by the head-stones
of soldiers and pioneers,
and anywhere there's a little ground
not entirely arid

I love marijuana dealers,
the bubble of the bong,
flaming lungs,
and spontaneous song

I love the writers and the artists
that spring up in every tiny city
(some of them wired in to the discussions
of the entire virtual globe)

I love Robert Frost
and "adopt a highway"
and Frank Sinatra singing:
"I did it my way"

I love apple-pie and patch-work quilts,
and the old Chinese man
who sits on the corner outside my apartment
sometimes waiting for a friend in a car,
sometimes just sitting there,
somewhere in his ancient psyche
trying to fuse Confucius and Li Bai
with airplanes, pizza hut, and Kerouac

There are plenty of things I dislike, too,
in this land of white bread, cage-fighting, and factory-made honey.
But you'll find that in other poems