America Poems | Poemist

Popular America Poems

American Names

by Stephen Vincent Benet

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Seine and Piave are silver spoons,
But the spoonbowl-metal is thin and worn,
There are English counties like hunting-tunes
Played on the keys of a postboy's horn,

......

September On Jessore Road

by Allen Ginsberg

Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

......

A Supermarket In California

by Allen Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles
full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you,
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the
meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

......

One Song, America, Before I Go

by Walt Whitman

ONE song, America, before I go,
I'd sing, o'er all the rest, with trumpet sound,
For thee--the Future.

I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality;
I'd fashion thy Ensemble, including Body and Soul;
I'd show, away ahead, thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish'd.

(The paths to the House I seek to make,
But leave to those to come, the House itself.)

......

What He Thought

by Heather McHugh

We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled a couple
matters over. The Italian literati seemed
bewildered by the language of America: they asked us
what does "flat drink" mean? and the mysterious
"cheap date" (no explanation lessened

......

Recent America Poems

Freedom Should Not Be About Race

by Hébert Logerie

All of us should know by now that there’s one race:
The Human Race. Narcissism and nepotism
Are destroying the very febrile fibers of our society
Greed and narrow-mindedness, at an increasing space
Are eroding our soil like mites devouring the mechanism
Of our ingenuity. This is odious. What a sad and sorry pity!
Freedom is about being at liberty to do things on our own
Freedom is about being in control of our destiny
Freedom is about using our God-given talent to be
And to do whatever inspires us at dust, at dawn

......

Are we too late - America's plight

by Dr. Robert Ippaso

How did we get to where we are,
America - the one undimming shining star,
A land of freedom, of unbounded pride
Where no one needed run and hide
For their religion or mere thought,
Democracy - the very heart of what was taught.

Now the Media drums a beat
That too many rush to heed,
Politicians seem at war

......

A Dreamy Democracy In Danger

by Hébert Logerie

This is not what we were taught in school
Fights, mayhems, police arrests and brutalities
In the soiled streets. Compatriots, it’s never cool
To see so much blood and so many fatalities.

Competing banners are everywhere. A ticker-
Tape parade has gone wrong. Terror and horror
Got together for the wrong reasons, at the wrong
Place. There are too many obscenities in the song.

......

What Is It That I See?

by Jeffrey Pipes Guice

As I look across America
What is it that I see?
A once strong and proud republic
That was all about opportunity...

As I look across the land
What is it that I see?
Hungry little children
With their arms stretched out to me...

......

November 2020

by Sarah A

America, born of original sin
Struggle for survival since its birth
Nation of immigrants who hate each other
children of love be our savior