America

(awaiting the second coming)

America of Grandfather Whitman 
is no less green and no more red 
a thousand years later,
the tribes that watered his gardens
visible and invisible now as then 
wear badges of insult and humiliation
pride and prejudice, in the silence 
of courtrooms stifled, in the decadent dance  
of black and white to white-out guilt,
and the dignified citizens he spawned
count surreptitiously sporadic victories
chew on the chagrin of centuries buried deep.

America that was and would become pluralised 
as vivid, varied and numerous as immigrant and native
so defined and transformed in redefinition,
the relevant political economies 
of the before, the now, 
the becoming and futures imagined 
Americas, no more poor no less wealthy
than the colonial cousins deemed lesser in the South
and the bedfellows of genocide up north, less but not as low,
Americas and Americans of that time 
were not museumed as were those lands and children
that were and came before. 
America of the eternal verities:
America of joy and sorrow
America of profit and loss
America of praise and blame
celebratory and notorious America and Americans 
as collective overall, 
as segment through cleaving 
historic and accidental 
with and without blood-letting.

Misnamed but not misbegotten America,
led by manicured arrogance 
objected to in word —
many and not so many —
by poets who dissected past,
navigated the present-complex 
mapped her countenance 
traced scars and tears
wrought in tectonic fracture, 
marked the petrified glacial horror 
and the meltdowns that bled
into lake and river —
love’s slow obliteration of history,
unearthed griefs discarded 
and the most ancient of the simplest joys,
are writing, as I write, a blueprint 
for a carburetor that can reboot a corroded engine, 
a redemptive radiator and filters too
made of the finest gauze, membranes and papyrus 
whose resilience was branded in unnecessary wars. 

First there were none 
and then there were thirteen
between the Mississippi River and Appalachian Mountains
a constitution there was 
from the Iroquois Confederacy wrought
copyrights were not waived 
they were made not to count;
first there were thirteen states
and then the bowels of the Founding Fathers spilled out
their entrails snaked their way South and West
there was annexation by gun 
and by rights arrogated upon herself —
                the Guano Act of 1856,
the alibi of accumulated excrement was milked 
and seabirds and bats never knew or cared 
the fertilizer of insatiable greed was strewn far and wide, 
excremental increment was foundational  
then and later and even now, 
and not just in the United States of Amnesia:
that which was Britain, France and Spain,
that which was Mexico
that which was nothing of marauders therein 
that which was commonly held and not priced 
that which was priceless in the philosophies that reigned 
were mapped, named, marked and stamped —
the greatest land theft in remembered history.  

America of the United States 
overruled dignity and civilisation 
subdued righteous and righteousness 
and still its enormous stomach hungered,
and so gluttony spawned blood-letting
one hundred and thirteen and counting 
brown, black, yellow and white blood 
obliterated the red of the native,
Prepared America,
America of Guano-Seek
America of Seizure 
America the Self-Righteous
America of Mis-Naming,
America in democracy’s bastardization,
Jittery America manufacturer of enemies 
America the Pawn of Weapon and Pharmaceutical 
Urinating  America, territory-marker, 
a beast with one hundred and twenty eight heads 
friend of despot, monarch, junta and zealot 
Forgetful America inks rules in languages she does not know.

Grandfather Whitman floats over leaves of grass
sharp blades lacerate and his words, drenched
with blood of unknown signature, and
addresses poets and freedom fighters
the patriarchal, the fratricidal, the theatrical and obsolete:
“America was not mine, I did not create nor own, 
America was and is a fantasy, it’s dimensions
are now surreptitiously shifted 
and now in bold brush-stroked arrogance redrawn,
America was a noun, when I recorded
her continental cleavages, examined the syrups
of her veins, and traced her monumental coporeality,
America is noun, still, improper and egregious,
a gun, a drone, poisonous gas, climate-wrecker, 
warlike, war-liking and warrior, idiomatic aberration,  
thrusted down throats of the untrusting,
sugar-coated happy pill for the naive,
metaphor for desecrated temples, past-tenser of cities and peoples;   
I am not America, but America claims me, claims 
the bold with the timid, grotesque with the handsome, 
claims the apple and the pie, sticks fingers in exotic dips
draws out profit, purchases anonymity, apathy and horror —
I can no longer say ‘growing pains, be patient’;
I am too long dead to awake or awaken 
but I hear there are one hundred Freedom Trains on their way,
I hear they can swim, I hear they can fly, I hear
that they are sealing military installations and confiscating weapons  
and disarming the misinforming with transcendental smiles,
I hear they come to rewrite all my words, and to them
I say: “welcome citizens of the world, I am honored.”