24 march 2012
On America
Just like my father
you are broken: the eggs
are melted, the scrambled ham
is rotten, and the steak
is mostly corn.
John Wayne died on the farm
seeing that everyone was
hanged by the judge,
his bravado drawing
a clear line in the East River
against the "injuns" in the sky.
Now, his cowboy hat and Colt .45
are trampled carictures
on the playground.
The purple fabric of your mountains
regally outsourced to oriental
shoddy workmanship chronically
bleeds in the acid rain,
eating at the decaying landscape of
crumbling bridges, communities
ravaged by renewal,and those
neatly rowed suburbs.
It competes for the love of Jesus
concealed in weapons permits
with the 2012 nativity/Santa-Rudolph The Reindeer
Light Show Extraveganza
for a spot on the list
behind Senators and Bankers.
God has given up
on the souls who call for him
the most, who plead
to make things right
but
even he knows
the message has been lost in translation.
Fight! you great rabid eagle:
your life source, your men and women
abandon you in search of the American Dream
that have fallen like grains of sand
on your majestic beaches through
loopholes twisted in supply-side slippery slopes,
refusing to let go like an abusive preacher
late on a mortgage payment,
insiting that he will not unfasten his hands from the neck
out of pure love for the wool of his flock.
For
we are numb and cannot afford
shiny obesity.