In my America
The Constitution is a false advertisement
Our entitlement to its guarantees
Are dealt in measure by the contrast
Between our skin color
And the Bible upon which
We lay our hands for entrance
An invisible cardboard Uncle Sam
That puts his hand up to his eyeballs
Tells me with a speech bubble that
“You have to be this rich
To get on this ride”
And I am constantly told
That I don’t qualify
By the well-meaning people
With a curiosity barely hiding
An ingrained ignorance
They refuse to let go
While asking, digging
For the answer they seek
Instead of the one I have
With “Where are you from?”
And leveraged as a curse
That most genteel of descriptors
Flagellates with self-incrimination
Anyone bordering its definition
To force back our reach toward equality
Oh how FAIR is our sex!
In my America
We’ve been baited and switched
While those who enjoy the genuine articles
Swing wildly their billy clubs
While blindfolded and oscillate
Between reciting the oath of allegiance
And shouting at anyone aiming higher
To go home if they don’t like it
The ascent to Mount Rushmore
Is paved by the rotting flesh of the
Unlucky caught in the melee
Stinging the eyes of anyone
Still able to take in the majestic view
With its putridity stirred afresh
By dying pilgrims seeking refuge
Now refused entrance even
As their tears swell in relief
Those words on Ms. Liberty’s base
In my America
We spend our dollars on marketing
But neglect the value underneath
And the essence of the ideals
That drove its founding
Is now a dying prostitute
Riddled with STIs from days
Of being peddled on the streets
To monied clients with antithetical desires
By pimps who bark out her virtues
While pocketing all her earnings
Leaving addictions that fill her veins
With a sense of vainglory that
Barely buys the imagined heroes
From her heroin trips
Sent out in their younger days
To exchange their ideology
With the preachings of grand visions
From the mouth of automatic rifles
In my America
We crave celebrity endorsements
And forget the side effects
We nest doll the same
Unhealthy relationship
In every stratum of social interaction
In which we must demonstrate
Our love for a country, a star, a POTUS
That doesn’t love us back
Because this is the individualistic society
That despises nonconformity
E pluribus unum only celebrates the one
After you’ve already savaged
Your way to the pinnacle
But stretching your hand out
Seeking help on the climb
Will only engender the label
Of being lazy and a drag on the economy
In my America
We love our neighbors with small print
That no one reads but upholds
With their negligence
We are a colorful tapestry
That pools toward similar colors
We invent but use our ingenuity
To enslave others
To bring quicker destruction
To ever larger masses
To set tunnel vision
And segregate by isolation
To kill redundancies
That would have blunted falls
To cut to the bone where
We saw no purpose
For the moment
To lose ourselves in the now
And forget to plan for the future
That’s sliding into the past without notice
While the process speeds up
In our craving for a piece of the present