THREE POEMS by GLENN INGERSOLL

I got a country

found in the UC Berkeley library database

I got a home in-a dat rock

I got a marble and a star

I got a right to sing the blues

I got loaded

I got plenty o' nuttin'

I got the word in me and I can sing it, you know

I gotta hunger; I gotta need

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I was

found in the UC Berkeley library database

1.

I was a Black Panther

I was a CIA agent in India

I was a conscientious objector

I was a five-dollar lawyer

I was a Franco soldier

I was a head-hunter

I was a monk

I was a Mormon

I was a Nazi flier

I was a probationer

I was a Protestant minister

I was a savage

I was a share-cropper

I was a slave in Russia

I was a soviet worker

I was a stranger

I was a Swayamsevak

I was a teenage dwarf

I was an English poet

2.

I was condemned to the chair

I was curious

I was defeated

I was glad

I was going anyway

3.

I was Hitler's doctor

I was Hitler's prisoner

I was Hitler's slave

I was influenced by the political situation

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I am

found in the UC Berkeley library database

I am

a barbarian a black woman

I am

a bushman a camera a cat a Cossack

I am

a fugitive from a chain gang a literary agent a little orphan girl

I am

a lover a man a mathematician

I am

a memory a Mosotho a peach tree a Protestant a Pueblo Indian girl a rabbi’s wife a rock

I am

a salesman a shaman a stranger

I am

a weapon a woman a woman and a Jew

I am

Adam adopted afraid there is a god alive

I am

an American an impure thinker

I am

ashamed because we are blessed

I am

bound for California the little girl sang collecting rainbows content with my good fortune

I am

freedom’s child from Brownsville from Odessa gazing into my 8-ball

I am

gone sir grateful

I am

Hamlet having an adventure home free

I am

Joaquin Kushi Lazarus listening to Istanbul looking to the North for my life

I am

my beloved my brother myself

I am

no good at pleading not a practicing angel not a short adult not an island not my body not myself

I am

one of you forever

I am

prepared to die right running home says the lamb sitting in a room so sick

I am

somebody still the greatest says Johnny Angelo talking about revolution

I am

the blues the cheese the clay the darker fire the fox

I am

the king the one who walks the other

I am

the sum of my actions the sun

I am

thinking of my darling thou Yahweh

I am

you you

I am

you

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Glenn Ingersoll works for the Berkeley Public Library where he hosts Clearly Meant, a reading & interview series. His epic prose poem, “Thousand” (Mel C Thompson Publishing), is available from bookshop.org and as an e-book from Smashwords. He keeps two blogs, LoveSettlement and Dare I Read. Recent work has appeared in New Note Poetry, Heliosparrow, and Unlikely Stories.