America (2011)

America I’ve given it my all and you left me with nothing.

America five-hundred dollars credit, September 30, 2011.

I can’t afford my own peace of mind.

America when will you let me take off my clothes?

When will you be empathetic?

Will you ever stop sending our best eggs to die in deserts

and middle eastern streets?

America what plans are you concocting while we sleep?

I won’t let my emotional life be run by your atomic bomb.

America I feel sentimental about the West Memphis Three.

I studied Castro in school and downloaded music and I’m not sorry.

You should have caught me abusing Napster.

America I’ve checked into Hotel California.

America live fast die fun.

Forever young.

America when will you stop funding the human wars?

America free Tookie Williams.

America save the Arab-Americans.

America Mumia Abu-Jamal must not die.

America WE ARE TROY DAVIS.

America why are all your hospitals so full of tears?

When will you be worthy of your millions uninsured?

Leave my Medicare alone.

Go fuck yourself with your HMOs.

I just bought myself a gun so I can feel safe in my bedroom.

America look who’s wearing the strap-on.

America this is freedom of expression.

My ambition is to write despite how hard you make it to keep a pen.

America this continues to be serious.

It’s serious on the news in the streets in the schools in the churches.

Everybody thinks this is serious except for YOU America!

They mean food when their stomachs growl.

They mean medicine when their coughs do the talking.

They’re trying to speak when they go quiet.

America are you paying attention?

America you’re becoming quite greedy.

ME wants Big Oil.

ME like skyscraper and concrete landscapes.

ME have foreign Tar-Sand dreams.

America China is still rising against us.

America you don’t know who to go to war with.

America it’s them bad Terrorists. Them Terrorists and them Freedom Fighters.

Them Terrorists wants to blow us up again. Them Terrorists fly our planes.

Them Terrorists is suicidal and crazy. He wants to blow us up with envelopes

out our own mail boxes.

America all that’s left in Oklahoma is the Tree.

America but it is you and I who are still perfect.

America I am Canadian and this is the view I get from the television set.

America that wasn’t icing sugar you used to sweeten the Winnipeg sky in 1953.

America when will you fuck off and let me be?

America when I was eighteen years old I was watching the news with my mother and it showed us images of kids running out of their school with their hands held to the back of their heads and they were following the police officers while guns were firing and the injured kid crawled across the library floor and dangled outside the window for all the cameras to see and still inside were two kids with guns and bombs and trench coats who walked around their school and killed all the jocks they could shoot and then they killed themselves.

Then there was Virginia Tech.

America then ten more innocent holes in the Beltway.

America you still don’t understand what happened to Ron Kovic when he came home.

The Old Man can’t fish in the Gulf of Mexico.

America my name is Forrest Forrest Gump and people call me Forrest Gump.

America shit happens.

America I’m imagining there’s no heaven and I like what I see.

I won’t find your Jesus until I’m ready.

I believe I’ll finally find Neverland.

America I’m a super freak I’m super freaky.

America I’m going to keep on rockin’ in the free world.

America how many times will you turn your head and pretend you just don’t see?

America the answer is blowing in the wind.

Easy Rider.

Freedom Writer.

America I found Forrester and he’s pissed

because nobody remembers his book

because you took all the books out all the libraries and you closed the libraries.

America for a fisher of men you’ve thrown many of us back.

America this is the view through Garry Gilmour’s eyes.

America is it becoming clear?

I didn’t say anything America.

...Nevermind.