I have never felt more American than this moment. I am a 100 grasses growing. I’m tired of the American Mussolini. I worry for my friends who I know there. I think of my time spent at Big Sur and of my poet friend who took me to Carmel to see another poets house . Robinson Jeffers who built his Tor House for him and Una. Of the time in the bus I took from Monterey and my visit to the Steinbeck museum. This was the grit and gristle I wanted from America not some gun junkie God pervert. My time in America was mostly in prayer and jazz and poetry at sacred grounds. Columbus Avenue I haunted like some beat ghost visiting city lights by day and night. New Orleans my beloved. Canal Street cable cars to the Mississippi hearing jazz on Frenchman street drinking hurricanes at O’Reilly. As Maya Angelou said And still I rise.