Ring Freedom like cold metal
Around my wrists.
Jewels of the white, red, and blue
Sparkle in the lights
Beneath our impossible stars and stripes.

Paint my prison bars
In the blood of your sacred
Innocence.
Did Destiny manifest itself in your heart?
Did she blind you to the suffering of those who walked before?

Lady Liberty bring me peace.
Adrift in this American ocean; red and thick. It tastes of iron. It smells of blood.
Do you see those bony broken backs that have built you?
Do you dare look them in the eye?

How are we to believe those lofty words
hoisted upon our souls?
Life, Liberty, Happiness, Equality
Were surely written with pure intent.
Have we enslaved the poor, the broken, the citizens of our own continent?

Speak like you know how to scream.
Speak like you ache to be free.
Just speak.
We will not be led by blind indifference.
Love will seize our hearts and make them whole.
Speak. Speak. Speak words of hope.
For what fear do we have of the rope?

E Plurbus Unum holds our lives for ransom.
Burn down this shamed house of greed.
See the light of a nation freed.
Hear those bells ring out aginst the silent auction of captivity like the hearts of We the People.

Harken now to the fighter's call
From demigod warriors to the petitioners at the mall
We band together and rise when they divide and fall
E Pluribus, Unum: we rise above it all

Is mystery dependent on me thinking of mystery?
It is a safe bet.
For when what is central is knowledge, then I can only become aware of mystery if upon something new or unknown.
Thus, mystery is not knowledge, but the lack of it.
Mystery is ignorance.
Thus, my meditation is rather reflection on ignorance,
As if I'm trying to better describe ignorance, or find a way out of ignorance with only the experiential.
I think of mostly consciousness and the universe here, in terms of my and humanity's ignorance of them.
Not only am I limited by my own understanding but also the understanding of others, however much they are even more intelligent than me.
I see others working on problems that have proven to not solve the mystery, the mystery being ignorance.
The only thing that could solve it is omniscience.
Then it follows that what I'm really trying to solve is omniscience.
"Infinite cognition" as the Buddha put it.
Even if a person could have omniscience, it would be colored by how they can make sense of reality.
Knowledge would take the form of what is most familiar.
Thus, when wondering about a question as to what is pi, they may say about 3.14.
The answer conditioned on how people and the omniscient one would have the capacity to hear.
Maybe this seems more like intuition.
But omniscience would denote the person as a speaker, yet only allowable to speak as what was conducive for everyone's best.
This is how Baha'is look at Manifestations of God: only allowed to share a certain amount at a time.
Just as the Son said "I have many things to share with you, but you cannot hear them now".
Still their capacity would be limited to what they themselves were interested in.
For one who is marginalized and oppressed or even thronged by multitudes, often has no willingness to delve deeply into subject matter, it causing some to stray from a correct path.
Since fractal systems work strongest in more diverse settings, it would seem that the very thing that makes it strong also makes its capacity to hear weak.
Omniscience therefore, if given to only a few, has a limited range of effect.
But even this limited range would change the entire system.
As Baha'u'llah calls His followers "the leaven" and the Son calls His followers "the salt".
"Many are called but few are chosen" seems derogatory in a world where "ye are all the leaves of one tree".

World consciousness almost arose to love tonight, but the lover ensared it in his anger once again.
If I close my ears to them, will it go away?
If they close my ears to me, will I go away?
Strength in the diversity of parts.
Strength really meaning pain.
E Pluribus Unum.

each day is new.
each life is measured re-ified or ified,
--- but 1.0 can't think past named things and their uses.
--- 2.0 must have an intuition of good begetting
that includes 1.0 gnosis of aim in an immediate way.

Oh. Here's a map.
Like Disneyland as a mall...
or DC with the alu-mini-um pyramid on top.

A schema instantiation, says the blithering flow
charting our course to
sapins sapiens augmentatious
It's obvious,
the children shall all be 2.0 in 1.0 mechanical material;

the tree of knowledge was all inclusive.
hence, the POV development circuits
are cross sired-wired dialecticalishit

seen innerish, not clearly but
seen, men as trees sorta thing.
not blind
but not visionary in a professional
TED talk worth
attending to after eight straight.

The time on earth is variable.
The cost/value of a duration is perimental,
be
coming here
being still
unborn in silken wombs
--- chirp

there are ground squirrels in California
which chirp
incessant chirp chirp chirp with

enough variety in volume tone and frequency,
to make old Morse Code five-letter code groups
come rattling through the radioman's head.

killit.
no, focus, do some meditatishit mind over world,
silken swaddles to moth or...

squeeking wheel gits the grease.
grease it, no, go to the squirrel and trigger its
cog that has no
cognition save intuition. Click.

look it in the cute little squirrel eye.
see it see you, say to it, shut up.

it don't blink. it don't shut up.
bold rodent,
I AM MAN. I shout, it squeeks,
gnoshit,
no cognitive over ride of intuition to fear the man,
is thinkable.
It is a squirrel.

It don't mean nothin'. A curse o' apophrenia on ye.

Bubbles in bubbles, foaming Being
Thoughts resolve to gearish
imaginations
cogs and gears and wheels whirling through some
filtering of needless data informing points
big
number
dimensional, scale and distance, durational
direct
measure in systems
for value and balance,
with no true vacuum, but the idea,

the null-set. Where never happens and nothing is.

We twist hard here.
The torque is what jects
the ob at the sub, via a
mechanical cam-shaft, pusher-puller-twister system
mit ein trigger, which we
click.
Think.
Who is writing my part in the book of life?
I asked me, you are not here, but
in my mind I hear replies more wise than I was
inclined
to imagine
a common man of common gifts can be for
believing
magic has always been
what magi know how to do for goodness sake.
Magi. Heros.
Not a no knack common man, wombed or un.

Peace nullifes any reason War-corroded minds can
calculate,
the numbers prove it all. Count the stars.
Use your augmented eyes, search your global memory,

run the numbers, nullify time with eternity,
subtract the works of darkness,
(don't delve into the details, you can imagine hell some other time)

----
A Valis idea, stuck between my chew-eschew-awarea
P.K. ****, trips, bags, and scenes
as became the cliche'.

Let 'em imagine any thing, define the terms and force
agreement for access.

Insider wannabe, do you agree, come and see? Or
do you dare to challenge

the common sense of all man kind as represented in Christ
of Nicea and Abeka Books, from Pensacola, Florida,

Whoa, rock the box, make bubbles cavitate the prop,

spinnin wheels like the Bismark's final bow.

--- i'm un comfortable and I don't know why.
--- a feeling
--- those are mocked as meaningless, by apathetic slobs.
--- so easy being a ***, ethos pathos logos, ***
--- comic relief
--- in mortal moments of turmoil and confusion as things are stirred.

All that could be shaken, was shaken.
All that could be strained, was strained.
All that mercurial messages could mean, was meant.

We lie in wait, wishing cogs and cogitate was as symbiotic
a thought as we thought while thinking

earlier
Art is artificial intelligence. Imagine that. A.I.

Demiurge, my cultural osmosis of vocalizings,
left me thinkin' a demi urge
is a little urge, a diminutive urgekin,

urging me to be
creative, let that lil' light shine, Marjoe

these being public displays at the edges of some of the bubbles,

bubs, some kid just shook my bottle

to pretend the wine was moving of itself, making turmoil

careful as in accurate art-iculation, this is not realist materialist
gasping
grasping for
dignity, stalwort, courage, responsibility

we are yet legions, industrial models
used to build swords with motors,
when we come to America, we join the unem.
We, the people's industrial war complex, merge
with the abandonded gods Neil Gaimon pointed out,
formin a loose unity of spirits, engines and factories and artisans

self-defined, an unum from many, on a national scale,

Da deme demotic da-emonic conspiracy of steam, incorporated
with dwarven knackeristics of old,
fur usin' Hermes as a river to call gold to our rule maker,
food bringer, h'laf weard, Lord of the loaf.

Listen,

illiterate heathen, my Grandma said we'd be if we did not know the story
after hearing it told three times.
Third time's the charm.

We were weighing your worth,
got hooked on a breeze from the broom sweeping this
pile of parts and pieces of what you imagined being worth

that's not much more worth than one in eight millions of millions,
of you kind, unless you earned admitance to the inside

externalization of imagination
pro-ject that on next---
stop. Imagine all that
and guess... ob or sub... its your roll.

I'm the door, says the door. I have no key, it says to me,
come and see,

the progress regress con tro tra la la la

That rascal who just wondered by on Youtube

com a part mentalized, an urge to count the cost

ungrateful and thanksgiving
curse and bless
sweet and bitter from one fount, that ought not be, but
it is possible, all things are,
it can be evil, but
on
discovery
such a curse is not worse than miss fitting a taken point,

we ethos pathos logos ourselves, we say, my domain,
bad
poetry can have good ideas in it. Ah, I see.

Humble your self under the mighty hand of that which has been
given the joystick,

eh, what if a lie is running your ranking order?
careful articulation?

Jackson Pollack step up, this carefulness of art,
answer that for me.

Ah, the hero, around whom thy sun wraps, what haps ever after,

you get old and the world changes against your wish.

do you believe in God.
I do, the one Jesus believed in,

by my leave, my letting a true thing be

happily, after a life of seeking for another path.

The earth is round.

Are there ideas that cost, in the use?
Is there an ancient of days account
of idle words

verbs given for acts, as seen done, from an earthling POV
idle verbs that call no act
lest the cost come clear, daemonitic tech that seems magic,
blessing cursing and claiming to heal, all
mere art... the ability to be like Jesus, that knack

there was a wise man, as he was sweeping his way one day,
his daemon, who had the assignment,
reported finding meaning
in being filled
to over flowing, have you boasted that? Never?

Did you ever shed a tear for another's pain?

You know, pathos, commonality of us all, or you know
not
and the sufficiency of evil is calling you to be the inner hero,
making room for truth
in a heart fed lies from the womb.

After all is said and done. Believe the truth makes free
upon the point of knowing the story.

Love is a verb I seldom use. I dared redeem it for future use.
It cost me dear reader.
there are verbs we abuse at a terrible price. Paid. Not by me.

Show's over, Radioman morphed to Grandpa and Oliver
watching the real world turn beneath the sun,
relative to an earthling POV. The day's sufficiency of evil all swept away.

It happened in a flash.
winding down a Rocky Mountain road,
a trio of travelers,
basking in snow-draped vistas
pulled off for a photo or two.

Their tires locked into a snow bank
and after a few futile wheel spins,
the undeniable truth sank in;
they were stuck!

In moments, the slamming of car doors
echoed across the valley,
an ad hoc community of a dozen neighbors
formed, converged and began to dig.

After a half hour of elbow grease
amid vapor clouded exhalations:

      “straighten the wheel,”
           “slow and easy on the gas” and
                “all together  push now,”

the tires recaptured the road.

No one called "meeting adjourned"
but as quickly as it formed,
our ad hoc community
dispersed into the winter chill:
good folks working
in harmony for a solitary cause.

E pluribus unum!

you were born in Denver
during a white out blizzard

like all round babes,
you had no clue, what was in store for you
you couldn't have known...

you would be
the last nickel to ***** through
a five-cent coin phone box,
in El Paso, Texas

or that you would sleep
for a year in a piggy bank,
of a boy named Felipe, who would die
of white blood cancer, before
he could spend you

and who would have thought
you would be in the linty pocket
of a serial murderer named Ray, when
he was captured in Santa Fe, a sunny day
on the ancient square, stalking
his next victim

a jailer used you that very night
with a twin of yours he found in
another picked pocket, of a drunk drifter,
to buy a Hershey's bar, from a machine
that would have taken a dime as well

your face began to show the fingered
signs of age by the time the choppers found sky  
above the Saigon Embassy, where you had spent
an aching April night in the Ambassador's pants

when you turned a half century, you were tossed
into a gallon jug, e pluribus unum, no more special
than others a third your vintage

I finally met you today, only because chance landed you on
the top of the heap, waiting to be saved from further folly

Hanna to me is the  BEGINNING of an evolution,
She finds me the END(of her fervent seeking for long)
Many worlds (we knew) existed between us until then,
Willingly crunch to make a perfect ONE from the debris.

i was borne of one heart
two sides, but cor unum
i was blessed with a sweet pairing before me
a gentle winds at my birth whispering
go forth and take us with you
my breaths are an ode
and my fears reflect an earthly greatness
a mountain range behind and before me
do not forget the love that made you..
so vast
while i, an open crater
must drink to fill parched canyons
that echo my name


i cannot wait for rain

Munda cor meum ac ***** mea, omnipotens Deus.

For my heart has ached with the pain
of separation from You. My lips have
spoken words that have caused others
to be in turmoil.

Perevangelica dicta deleantur nostra delicta.

For only in the Gospel will my answers be,
through the Christ, the Redeemer, my
redemption from this life of multiple lies.

Credo in unum Deum.

For both Scripture and Tradition tell
me this is how He exists. Our common
Lord who will wash clean the heart.

In spiritu humilitatis et in animo
contrito suscipiamur a te, Domine:
et sic fiat sacrificium nostrum in
conspectu tuo hodie, ut placeat
tibi, Domine Deus.

Let everything within me live up
to the words I pray. May every
promise, to you, Good Lord, be
everything to me.

For only in the Father,
only in the Son,
only in the holy Spirit,
is found the truth I have so
deeply been trying to reclaim.

Satietatem potare dulci nectare tua desiderium ego
Ad nos transeat, usque mane
Nostra corpora convol
Corpora nostra lusibus
Sol ortus, Sitis commoratur

Amorem vivere devora tua suavita
Vitae caelestis
Nostra ad et aut angelus diaboli
Quod viget, vitae singulis nobis,
Retorta peccatorum gaudium de salute nos

Corpora *** carnis luxuriam
Tenebrae concupiscentiis saginatus
Dolorem voluptatem servus
Impium impium fames
Sanctus diversitas peccatorum

Ita et nos, in manus nostras et amore peccatorum nos
Nos ad unum corpus est cor

Translation Latin to English

I drink my fill of sweet nectar of your desire
To pass to us until morning
Our bodies roll
Our bodies dance
The sun rises, thirst lingers

Love, live, eat your sweetness
heavenly life
Our call to the devil or an angel
That is active, the life of each of us,
Twisted sins, the joy of our salvation

Bodies with carnal lust
Dark desires fed
Pain and pleasure slave
wicked, wicked hunger
Holy diversity of sins

Even so we, in our hands, and the love of our sins
We are one body and heart

~Wes Noneya

My Latin isn't the best but I gave it a go. I like both versions.

must recognize our Form
in the mirror,
see our Face, and make our reflection
as we kiss it, though it regularly sickens
Us.

I

We are still Us, though
that probably means little if it ever did;

We have been amended beyond recognition
from centuries of lobbing
off limbs, appendages, stitching clauses
like bandages then forgetting about them
if we ever shower,
disfiguring the pale torso of our Body
politic, naked and middling before posterity
grotesque genitalia dangling
hopelessly, and useless
between marble columns
unable to unite in congress assembled
erasing pluribus unum;

We're our Legs, buckling under obscene weight
now cloture’s invoked, the question ordered
on history with yays and nays,
discourse long reduced to the nuances
of blusterfuck;

We're our Buttocks, passing gas
bills, denying a snowball’s chance of
melting in frozen hell or on house floor,
and our Brain, lobotomized
better half yearning “Yes, we Can…
…ada” beckoning the coasts, blue dots
on blue dot ever browning;

We're our Fists, clenching gavels
while advising Mother Earth to **** up
because even without her consent,
reality’s adjourned;

II

We're our Skin—yes, our Skin—, thin-
ly veiling contempt insufficiently concealed
by layers of spray tan and unmarred
by blood sweat tears of our foremothers
and our Brow, not sweating more perfect
when it's so easy to turn and follow storybook greatness,
when our Fingers, callused from tweeting
Little Bits of *****,
which though once again retitled
and re-released, remains a classic,
completely unrevised;

We're our Ears, nostalgic for the crack of doom
and we're our Tiny Hands, unable to help themselves
from popping a Tic-Tac and grabbing
onto those titillating, dusty buttons
on the hydrogen jukebox;

We're our Eyes, heavy
as a defeated queen
with makeup running, blessing us
all for this operant foray into madness,
ever observing how our Arms, which
(torches now extinguished)
flail in confusion amid incalculable darkness
still hoist our pitchforks low and
our Tongue still grievously petitions
for more deplorable words amid
hallucinations of victimhood;

We're our *****, *******
on progress, except
which—failing to rise to the occasion—
nonetheless manages
to flop over and strike once more: a dis-
chord in common defense of
fragile white male privilege
always showing, never growing,
general welfare and tranquility flushed down
the toiletbowl of history
hoping those old turds never
resurface, still ignoring the stench of injustice
and the chipping of gilded porcelain;

We’re our Lips–which neither Broadway hits nor
newspaper clips nor high minded pleas alarmed,
and with Dr. Franklin’s warning notwithstanding–
We are our Lips on treacherous steps which will be
all executive power herein vesting;

III

We're our Palms, grasping rope amid air
saturated in deathly vespers, which tugs
down-up toward unearned heavens;

We’re our *****, pretending to be
our Mouths which chide & otherize, while
our Shins expose their cuts to ****,
bullet-holes welcoming the swift infections
in what dank sewage now pours from open
Overton windows, broken along with
any pretense of civility; ultimately,
the only thing we could shatter;

We’re our Holes, shamefully enjoying
the prodding and poking caresses
of anarchy, be-
moaning un-
Equal Protection law & order bestows,
depriving life, liberty, property
when our Hearts, weary of
the long hard due process, supremely
malign centuries’ holdings;

We’re our Immunity, sovereign it be
fighting all insults foreign and domestic
and our Voices rising in lamentation
for what we’ve lost and what we’ve barely kept;

We’re even our Hair, unkempt, distracting us
from enduring corruption of our Blood;

We’re our *****, too. No, never mind.
We never had any. But She did,
and class despite the strength
of glass;

IV

We’re all that still, and our Souls'
politic too, fractured much asking
what Un-
ited States we’re in;

The son of Jung, Achilles

(This is after and during a second or third time through
Jung, by Anthony Stevens, via Hoopla brought to me by LAPL)

libraries with online audiobooks,
isn't that closer to perfect? Imagine
knowing CG Jung's dad was Achilles Jung,
epic, knowing that
back when only real, material-real, rich folk,

(they could not have known, but we can, on a smart phone)

of any sort of the many there were in the co-fusion's aftermath

much of the world may agree with things once hidden in tomes
being eaten by mindless worms, now

no known thing is secret, by right

truth makes free and it's a system.

dynamic
free true free true free

We ident-ify it or id

what ever I and d


these ids (letter i and letter d as a pre
fix identifying us, u'n'me but only I am re-alified,
set to iseate

(is-e-ate is individuation for an idea, this or that, which may be verbalized
prior to re-alization)

t' be for a while, as long as you wish, t'
be fixed ideas in the minds of all

minds culturally touched
by this particular
point of
been
as
in been there done that.

Time is nothing at all
like mortals think
ing no no nothing is re

alone is rare. For us, my pieces of the unum,

we are here as ever.
ever is our role.

guides are made
however, we have noticed a scarcity of read writers
aware of pin points of light expanding

on the walls of his nursery window, nur turer, real mmmmm

screen
really must we be limited forever is ly lying as in

acting positive while being negative and being

entangled
in your self for ever, never for now,

you don't know how.

do you?
ex
per
ienced, per se, are ye?

be yond. yes. be

yond. practice makes perfect, bact to the top

erie canalic real

tote that veil, hide that barge
camptown lasies sang some songs

wrong, as did the ******* minstrels
and gamblers and bedroll
cowboys and hobos
and plain bums,
like us.

You were curious. Does yellow mean anything
to you?
Murrillo, with y's for ll, maybe? ¿ se?

--- un told stories ---

none remain, in re al ity, if we agree

nothing is ever impossible, even
for sapiens sapiens, how much
more, the us in the unum

previously pluribus,
scatter-brained,
that is.
id est, at its best. Muse.

Homeostatic balance,
hot to cool, cold to warm

round and round
twisted in the middle
by Van Allen's belt, or Orion's?

I never asked. I could,
right now I COULD WISH SO BAD THA I'D

not notice allcaps from the teenage wasteland,
(mea culpa, I bury all my misses there, take one, free)
as I,
the grown up number two, I mean,
I was saying I could stop this flow, interefer, dam it

I could ask Google and follow ath
the real thing either real or
otherwise, yet

wise, still.

How well will we be? Should we not

agree, un agree disperse the mob?

become a one, with a mind
we may share, at will,

reason, count, measure, make, see, seek how, find how, learn how

now,
why are you a ware of me while I am
ware of you.

An unread, unspoken spell. What the hell, right?
What the chaos, entropy, dis
integrate
wash away, mud to dust to twisting spirtis seen dancing

dust, this highest part of the dust of the earth,
time will tell, the physician must heal himself.

---
the art of letting things
haps
hap
pen, pen or ready-writer mode,
we can do this, but we must

be leaving the ality re all o'this reality.

And it has been fun, un done
fun is never the final goal.

be yond that. Search okeh. It was
intentended in tension-ality

to be the key we
as u me mist

when we
lied about being
experienced in the comunicito, (wee ity bity)
do you know of
the transfiguration, I was asked that

southside of Sunset at Laurel Canyon, by
that TV kung fu cowboy guy's dad,
Carradine, the old man,
from scary movies,
circa 1960.

that was fun. it happened. nobody noticed,
but me and the elder Carradine.

Real, as best as my memory just
ifies me right there,
that day, there
is where

this point was proven to be
memorable, a point
of a pin, 'pon whose head
merry messengers make nothing of
darkness, shadow, thin light.

Member be, re member
we see you saw
re all ity-ness is fun, if you find time to do it.

Typical assumptions of a man born in his time
and so
cial class. Social, is that a joke?

Follow me, don't be ignorant of a fine refined use,
right use of ordinariable words which have
born the burden of the ages

patiently, awaiting meaning,
on your scale,
the me as sure of the other in the unem,
the measure of a man, any
old man, still standing

under all the knowing Eve ever knows,
hope and time and all this took.
The price of knowing,
is the knowing, learning is easy

At home by right of being, we are such
beings, in a word, two if you reason there is
measurable ratio twixt
iiii in and am out, yamiyam ah yeh

we do. Allatimenolie, my will. The inside
the numinosity of being

me and you in the midst of all we may imagine real,

no, hell, yesses, hell is still a joke you never want to play.
ax Mr. Boo, he was my guide in Bangkok

read the reports, they are more,
nevermind, let's not let the

lie live here. the the right man thinking this thought
at this time, right

Each magi's knowing is the only knowing he can share,
without playing I pious fraud and naming it
legion, re
legion ligated to ob la dee and dah?

Joke, jest, foolish jest. Not my best but better'n
never imagi-ing  bein' good at all.
Good for nothing but
being possible
ly
good to the sense-if-ative troglodytes

with one lit window on reality. It's funny. POV. Seriously

lighten up
you putin me

beyond your grasp… winsome, alas

False flags and panic. Fear the other. Hate.
Be a Patriot. Act. As you are told.
When the people are frightened, they obey.
These are the times that few men try. At all.
No one can own you unless you want them to.
Gun in hand worth ten senators. Boom.
Gay Straight Male Female Black White Muslim Jew.
Exactly the opposite of E Puribus Unum.
Stir and stir, yet the *** does not melt.
Too many soups only antagonize the cook.
The fires of discord sizzle and fry.
Dare not to think, just buy and buy.

What Walt Whitman Knew About Democracy


For the great American poet, the peculiar qualities of grass suggested a way to resolve the tension between the individual and the group.


When Walt Whitman began conceiving his great volume of poetry, “Leaves of Grass,” in the 1850s, American democracy was in serious danger over the issue of slavery. As we celebrate National Poetry Month this month, the problems facing our democracy are different, but Whitman still has a great deal to teach us about democratic life, because he saw that we are perpetually in danger of succumbing to two antidemocratic forces. The first is hatred between Americans, which Whitman saw erupt into civil war in 1861.

The second danger lies in the hunger for kings. The European literature and culture that preceded Whitman and surrounded him when he wrote “Leaves of Grass” was largely what he called “feudal”: It revolved around the elect, the special, the few. Whitman understood human fascination with kings and aristocrats, and he sometimes tried to debunk it. But mostly he asked his readers to shift their interest away from feudalism to the beauties of democracy and the challenge of sustaining and expanding it.

Whitman offers one metaphor for the grass after another, and one feels that he could go on forever.

This challenge is what inspired him to find his central poetic image for democracy, the grass: “A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands.” Whitman says that he can’t and won’t offer a literal answer to the question. Instead he spins into an astonishing array of “guesses.” The grass “is the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven”; it’s “the handkerchief of the Lord…Bearing the owner’s name somewhere in the corners, that we may see and remark and say Whose?”

To Whitman, “the grass is itself a child…the produced babe of the vegetation.” “Tenderly will I use you, curling grass,” he writes. “It may be that you are from old people and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps / And here you are the mothers’ laps.” He offers one metaphor for the grass after another, and one feels that he could go on forever.



But mainly Whitman’s grass signifies American equality: “I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,/And it means,/Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,/Growing among black folks as among white,/Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff,/I give them the same, I receive them the same.” Whatever our race and origin, whatever our station in life, we’re all blades of grass. But by joining together we become part of a resplendent field of green, stretching gloriously on every side.

Whitman found a magnificent metaphor for democratic America and its people. Like snowflakes, no two grass blades are alike. Each one has its own being, a certain kind of chlorophyll-based individuality. Yet step back and you’ll see that the blades are all more like each other than not. Americans, too, are at least as much alike as we are different, and probably more so. America is where we can be ourselves and yet share deep kinship with our neighbors.

And who are our neighbors? Kanuck, Congressman, Tuckahoe, Cuff—Canadian, legislator, Virginia planter, Black man, all of the teeming blades of grass that we see around us. When you stand back far enough, you can’t see any of the individual blades, but look closer and there they are—vibrant and unique, no two alike. We say “e pluribus unum,” from many one. But who could have envisioned what that would look like and how it would feel before Whitman came along?


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The grass is Whitman’s answer to the problem that bedeviled his contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson: how to resolve the tension between the individual and the group. Emerson is sometimes hopeful that the two can cohere. When you speak your deep and true thoughts, no matter how controversial, he believed that in time the mass of men and women will come around to you. Each will say, ‘this is my music, this is myself,” Emerson says in “The American Scholar.” But mostly he is skeptical, believing that society is almost inevitably the enemy of genius and individuality.

Whitman’s image of the grass suggests that the one and the many can merge, and that discovery allows him to imagine a world without significant hierarchy. Can any one blade of grass be all that much more important than any other? When you make the grass the national flag, as it were, you get to love and appreciate all the people who surround you. You become part of a community of equals. You can feel at home.

We can look at those we pass and say not ‘That is another’ but ‘That too is me. That too I am.’

In “Leaves of Grass,” soon after he offers his master metaphor Whitman rises up to view American democracy from overhead. The poem’s famous catalogues of people doing what they do every day are quite simple: “On the piazza walk five friendly matrons with twined arms;/ The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,/The Missourian crosses the plains, toting his wares and his cattle,/The fare-collector goes through the train—he gives notice by the jingling of loose change.”

This is your family, these are your sisters and brothers, Whitman effectively says. In general, we walk the streets with a sense of isolation. But if we can move away from our addictions to hierarchy and exclusive individuality, and embrace Whitman’s trope of the grass, our experience of day-to-day life can be different. We can look at those we pass and say not “That is another” but “That too is me. That too I am.” Or so Whitman hopes.

Of course, the benefits that Whitman promises do not come for free, or simply by reading his poem. We’ve got to meet his vision halfway, by being amiable, friendly, humane and nonhierarchical. This repudiation of hierarchy is not so easy; it’s not clear that even Whitman himself pulls it off. Isn’t he trying to be a great poet, the first truly American bard? But his effort matters. He knew that democracy is always vulnerable, that the best hope for human happiness could disappear from the earth. But Whitman would not let that happen without a fight.

—Mr. Edmundson is a professor of English at the University of Virginia. This essay is adapted from his new book “Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy,” published this week by Harvard University Press.

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the April 17, 2021, print edition as 'What Whitman Knew About Democracy.'

Constantly in pursuit,
Evil at it's root,
Others follow suit,
Because E Pluribus Unum

Blinded by the signs,
Polluted in their minds,
Stacked up in their binds
To gloat for what they've done.

The chase for evermore,
Terrified of being poor,
Striving for the highest score,
Without having any fun.

Consumed by absolute greed,
Green is the color they bleed,
It's all they want, crave, and need.
In their death, it's the smoking gun...

Will my body forgive me
For the market I hold in her temple
Sins for a denarius
A farthing for a night under her tapestries
When you could be watching stars
Stars shine the same whether you clutch a ticket or a match
They love to be the last thing burning out at night
I am not close to their light
Burning seems of little consequence to me
Look upon the stars
Find them more patient than I in stamina
I more soluble in my regrets

The sun begins pulling cloud tears back from the earth
Agels whisper the innocence of the world into the atmosphere
The stratosphere knows nothing of our regrets
She does not see fingers crossed behind our backs
Knowing nothing of pennies given for promises
Promises given for free
Plastic coins for a lover
Nothing in my pockets for me

Hold your secrets under my skin
Knowing you let the night carry you away
You can take it back
These are the dreams in the desert
In the sun, under the mountains
Those who journey on foot
Knowing that knocking on doors means being turned away

My desire to cling to you
Is the cold that pushes you away
You are the oranges in the snow
A cold citrus kiss
I know your real name
With no courage to spit it out
These hands are clenched
No room for promises here
Between your fingers and skin
You grip regret so tight
One truth that will not abandon you
Biting not the hand that feeds
Go hungry
When a morsel is a memory
Dreams a feast to you
Regret devours all but bones

Anger has chosen your words for today
She is your strong horse
You will not bare the weight of the reins
A bit does not taste much of metal
When there is blood on your hands
Your prayer today
You have hope tomorrow, to hope for tomorrow
Time is a feather, fool
You give her flight for the price of falling
These coins in my pockets are for you
To make my steps lighter
A copper face is nothing
When you have seen the writing on the walls

e pluribus unum

they call me legion

How many hands will you give me
How many dealt
To count my sins on my fingers

misertus est enim stulti

stultus est misericordia sicut vilis ut eius precibus

When the walls speak will you listen

I confess
though thousands years have passed
since some barefoot soul called you
a god, I can't even recall the ennobled appellation
they gave you...Ra?

to those who carved on cool cave walls
your burning legacy was a  glimpse of gold infinity
to me, a wearer of shoes and master of plastic tools,
you are but a spec in the night, e pluribus unum,
a paltry 90 million miles from my spinning rock  

proudly proclaiming your *******  
you sear skins and sins of your followers
who supplicate to your filtered rays
while blithely ignoring, you number our days  
and will fizzle out like a sparkler, one finite July eve
who called you divine?