America your Strip-Searched Stars are Weeping
(Love Rant #9)
poem by dan smith, art by dave the dov
America
your red white and blue stars
are weeping
and I cry
for all those crying in the hearts wilderness
night trained urban hobos
leaving Cleveland on the fast freights
of their minds
I cry for you Parma
suburban death march Ghoulardi after images
as sunsets flame pink flamingo t.v. eyes
I cry for the shoppers at Marc's
when they run out of Ramen noodles
and the apple juice has gone from .98
to a buck twenty-nine and you can bet
it wasn't due to an increase in wages
I cry for the naked poets
who run through Marc's
stealing glances
at cashiers
who ring up
the everyday low prices of poetry
I cry for the I.W.W.
( syndicalism spindicalism )
the lost perspective of street car tracks
and jobs railroaded out of the country
I cry for the lubricant tears
of a dry eye nation
I cry for the bed bug infestations
of world trade viral infections
I cry for the weasel President
and puppets everywhere
I cry for the people's fear
and the gutted Constitution
for which it lies prostrate
one nation under the gun
so easily divisible
with liberty and justice
for those who can buy it
I cry as school systems
are dismantled for easy
brain washing manipulation
I cry for that Orwellian future
where we have always been at war
and one man's fanaticism
is another's profit
I cry for the singers
the poets and all non-ventriloquist voices
I cry for the wilderness
from the mountains to the prairies
to our oceans flecked with oil
( it's the U.S. of us not just them )
I cry for all the new memorials
built on the hideous lies
of the few
I cry for you
America
napalm scented stars
stained agent orange
glowing with depleted uranium
I cry for the workers
who have nothing to lose
but their irradiated Cadillacs
I cry as the Washington monument
gets up and starts walking to the sea
and Lincoln leaps out of his chair
hollering that play was lousy
and looking for his hat
and symbols symbolically ( father forgive them
they know not another way ) wrap themselves
in the flag and turning into cluster bombs
tell everybody to go fuck themselves
while the Statue of Liberty's face
turns red and she takes off
her statute of limitations
having run out
oh you
America
was it only yesterday
you seemed so beautiful
was it only illusion
oh you had a history alright
you were there when old George
pocketed the coins
from the national armory deal
you leered lasciviously
in Congo Square
you were in on it
when that Sacco and Vanzetti
thing went down
you flounced and batted your eyelashes
for the Scottsboro Boys
you squealed for Prohibition
then guzzled bathtub gin
your eyes lit up
over Hiroshima and Nagasaki
but this morning you old harridan
you are something worse
something alien
and so
I weep.
|
