Oh, America
Oh, America, my country,
My heart breaks for thee.
Stewards of your dignity
Have abandoned you.
Fires rage across the West,
Where once almond trees and redwoods grew,
Not because the forest meant them to,
To encourage growth, let sunlight through.
But because we raped and ruined you.
Plastic chokes your lakes and seas.
Something cryptic kills the bumblebees.
They would pollinate the peonies,
Making honey of their expertise.
Which new noxious toxins on their breeze
Spread disease?
Oh, America, my country,
In an active coup,
Looters drill your vast terrains,
And disfigure you.
Viruses infect the land.
Refugees who cross the Rio Grande,
Either drown before they reach the sand,
Or get classified as contraband,
Where they hoped to find a helping hand.
Birds above New Mexico,
Flying South to where the Dahlias grow,
In the throes of some grotesque tableau.
Die, and falter from the sky like snow.
No one seems to understand it though,
Down below.
Worst of all, America,
Your leaders lie, they say the earth is flat,
And half your citizens seem right with that.
They say the enemy is closing in.
Divide and conquer, undermine to win.
Wrong is right, and greed is not a sin.
Black is white, but black, accursed skin
To be born in.
They’d have a Civil War, once more, begin.
And women, well, for them,
Are simply: empty wombs,
And once they’ve given birth,
Abandoned tombs. Vacant rooms.
And children go to school
Where they are shot and killed;
Because the freedom to bear
Arms, a bane, is so instilled.
Oh, America, my country,
My heart weeps for you.
Land of opportunity,
Opportune for who,
Buffoons who tyrannize?
Charlatans who prophecize,
See conspiracy and hate arise,
Aim to terrify and polarize.
Zealous hypocrites evangelize,
Leading congregants with blinded eyes.
Hurricanes increase in size.
Floods besiege the land as oceans rise.
Mountains burst with great volcanic cries.
Belching smoke and ash into the skies.
Louts are lauded, while decorum dies.
Provocations to destabilize,
Crystallize.
Oh, America, my country,
My heart grieves for you.
Do I mourn for you,
Or who you aspired to be,
Or for Democracy?
Malice like I’ve never seen
Grows between us like a wide ravine.
Only providence can intervene.
Oh, America, adrift, obscene,
I pray for you.
I pray for you.
Oh say, can’t you see
Oh, America, my country…