America: Land of the "Free" and Home of the Morally Superior
America, spit-shined shoes and starry-eyed saints,
heart beating under the trumpets
you are an ingenue, a stock image of sensibilities.
America, your shadow looms over me.
We are sleeping the the gutters of streets paved with gold,
dreaming of the day our hushed proclamations of love can be said aloud,
tossed out of picket-fenced houses and rosary beads.
America, your silence is worrying me-
it belies a sort of subtle hypocrisy I can't quite name,
as you are hoarded by generations of wealth, locked in decaying mansions,
providing the illusion of grandeur.
America, I don't think you're listening:
there are people dying.
America, it can't be too late to resucitate the ideals upon which you were founded.
America, your flag undulates slowly,
wordlessly mocking the hopeless.
And Allen Ginsberg, speaker for the few,
rocks back and forth, shivering and terrified,
numb but for sluggish attempts at prayer,
whispering, "America, I've given you all and now I'm nothing."