Drummed out of the infantry of death I came back to you carrying the poems of my soul opened the door of life and found only death inside America I have read the State of the Union and listened to the state of the economy in a state of hysteria America where the poor and the black are sentenced to Attica and the rich serve time in San Clemente America where the coal miner’s lungs are used for corporate profit where the only sound that can be heard is the opening and closing of the downtown Bank of America America where the angry voices of suburban mothers can be heard preparing their children for death amidst the hurried jerks of masturbation coming from the university closets America where the blank faces move like a pendulum in a grandfather clock pointing in the direction of the once proud hobo now auditioning for a spot on the next reality show America where the elderly are treated like boxcars kept idle unemployed forced to walk the streets like an unacceptable poem America where the politicians sold the country to General Motors and AT&T and gave the people buffalo stew Tom Cruise and scientology Reader’s Digest has renewed its option on the education system the mafia weans the poor on drugs while IBM and Coca Cola compete for the nation’s heart as cancer and cardiac arrest ride high on the charts followed by Dow CHemical and DDT a hard combination to beat America this is not your land it was never your land it belonged to the American Indian long before you raped and plundered her and moved on to Mexico for your next conquest and the Indian never a greedy landlord was willing to share it with you but raised on the credo of winner take all you set out to kill them tribe by tribe slaughtering the buffalo the the proud warriors with rifles gatling guns and broken treaties and when that failed you killed them with alcohol starvation missionaries tuberculosis religion measles and small pox and western civilization left behind your death mask at Wounded Knee and Salt Creek where you massacred them in large numbers even as you would later do with Asians with napalm bombs in Vietnam America you chased Geronimo into Mexico Desecrated the bodies of women and children left behind a trail of genocide wherever you went maiming killing tribe by tribe these proud warriors who wanted nothing more than to live in harmony with the land America where capitalism farms out jobs to cheap labor foreign countries no longer having a need for the American work force bleeding dry the productivity of underdeveloped nations America where 1% rules the wealth of the land and the 99% are left to fend for themselves where over 20% of the population of the richest country lives in poverty where old men and women who work hard all their lives for the right to a pension wake up and find themselves laid off given a two week severance check made to seek a living at half their former pay men and women who have worked all their lives only to witness their employer go belly-up and find there is no pension fund left for them you can find them anywhere on park benches or wandering lonely supermarkets or sitting at neighborhood bars nursing their drinks like a blood transfusion while our congress men and women dine in splendor at restaurants with fancy white linen Tablecloths with waiters who make more money in tips than the minimum wage they toil for America these are your people too yet you treat them worse as animals in a human zoo they come in different flavors like life savers some thin and balding some fat and sweating some complaining bitterly and with just cause some too proud to let the pain show these forgotten heroes from ordinary walks of life trapped by false promises trapped by a belief in a system that has abandoned them men and women who suffer in silence who die unnoticed to be carted off in a meat wagon to be buried deep in the ground like a bag of rotting bones it’s the way of life it’s the way of capitalism it’s the way of cockroaches and mice it’s the American way it’s the system where just staying alive becomes a small victory America whose answer to crime is more prisons filled with more men and women of color lost souls who cannot make it on minimum wage or no wage at all America where politicians and banks looted the land made millions at the expense of the working class and displaced them from their homes with a cold calculating expertise that would make a bank robber blush with shame America where the CIA engages in illegal and immoral acts where the President signs death warrants on those in foreign lands America where labor unions are being systematically destroyed where women’s rights are spit on where the Supreme Court has been taken over by politicians dressed in black robes America where God has become a billion dollar TV industry and gangster rap replaced the national anthem America where the narc’s of New York City spawned from a generation of gangsters grows fat on the fears of faceless junkies America where holiness is found in the bowels of Buddha where Christ died on the cross and the police were quick to take his place America I listened to your bi-centennial message dripping blood like a butcher’s apron heard the drums salute the ghost of Custer calling her children to muster the magic Ohm of Ginsberg buried deep in the bowels of asshole billionaires who don’t know the difference between a poem and a dollar the American way if you can’t kill them buy them into the system America where The Pentagon is the name of the game no money for the sick and lame In God and corporate America we must trust America where Walt Whitman’s children are forced to breathe in black exhaust fumes worse than an x-ray of a coal miner’s lungs America the years grow heavy in the cavity of my heart leave me feeling like an army mules carrying a cargo of death each year sweetened with my thinning blood America who stood tall in invading Iraq the day the music of the Reichland played and thoughts of the Fuehrer rode high in the heads of the Pentagon masers the day the Bismark was played in the sea of the Persian Gulf and power once again became something more than a Detroit-made machine America you are living on borrowed time there will come a day when your troops are sent to guard the doors of our cities in the interest of corporate welfare afraid the walls will come tumbling down as some day they must here in America where the rich eat the flesh of the poor like frenzied cannibals dining at Burger King the government and corporate America partners in crime America where the cold face of ownership preens her face around each corner ignoring the streets filled with homeless the landlords duly protected by laws of office and power here in America where money and real estate rule here in America where the power of the few laugh at the powerless of the many here in America where the unemployed are pitted against the educated hucksters chauffeured in air-conditioned black limousines America there will come a day when the populace will dance in the streets and the people will have cause to celebrate once again for even the dullest of politicians knows the reign of the lion ends with age America there will come a day when the people will shed the skin of their masters their restless tongues no long panting like the tongues of tired dogs America you are the only country I have known and I have no longing for Cuba or Russia but I’m a man I’m a poet I’m the energy running through your veins all too aware of the storm troopers of justice who would turn off the beauty like a rusted faucet these men in blue who sniff the blood o my wounds like a hound dog crossing a river of blood their sirens wailing in the night play sad tunes outside my window like a poet forced to read under water where twice dead and once resurrected he turns over in his grave but the finger he raises is jammed back down his throat until the shit he shits is theirs and the blood they bleeds is his and the cries united fill the air like a lonely bird lost in flight
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It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see… Bitter heart… so sad