Letter to America

I love you and I hate you, America.
Why won't you walk your talk?
Why won't you show up at my birthday parties?
If you would take off that blindfold,
that Lone Ranger mask,
your left hand might see the gun
you hold in your right.

You're a schizophrenic bag lady,
wiping your ass with hundred dollar bills
and eating your dog for breakfast
because God told you to.
I know you better than you know yourself
because I, too, am crazy.
After all, I am your dissident bastard child.

I dwell on the fringes of your shadow, America,
and just like double-faced Janus,
I've got one eye turned towards your blazing torch,
your proud chest pounding
with the promise of justice,
your glorious, pealing bells of freedom,
and the other eye watching the portraits
of your founding fathers
rotting and putrefying
in your polluted locked closets.

Yes, I know your shadow, America.
There's an evil bearded foreigner
with a bomb in your closet,
and he's flying an airplane
right into a tall building,
hurtling flaming humans
out of windows
like sparks from a bottle rocket.

And in that same closet
is an American flying a warplane
and dropping a bomb
that incinerates an entire city.
Hundreds of thousands
of civilians, women and children
vaporized into dust!
Nothing but black smudges on the wall.
Poof.

Well, so what, you say? They don't matter?
They're foreigners--outsiders--not like us?
Look in the god damned mirror, America!
They are us and we are them!
Lay down your ooga-booga
Flintstones weapons
and take off your red, white and blue
spearchucker warpaint!
This tribe is a global tribe now.
Get your head out of your prehistoric ass
and join the world party.

I'm so fucking angry at you, America!
You could be the brightest star
of this civilization,
a shining example for all to follow,
but you fumble and drop the ball
and end up with a mouth full of astroturf
time and time again.

How dare you denounce other nations
for violating human rights
when you let your own brothers and sisters
die in the gutter like dogs
because they don't have
the right stars on their bellies
or enough magic beans in their pockets.
You're like a ventriloquist
with tourette's syndrome
and I can see your mouth moving.

Yes, I know which skeletons
are getting blowjobs
in that dark closet of yours, America.
There's an evil, brown-skinned foreigner
filling nuns and babies full of bullets,
turning them into piles of smoldering meat,
and there's an American right behind him,
handing over the motherfucking machine guns
and stuffing his bloated pockets
with greenbacks and the greasy fat of the land.

I'm so fucking angry at you, America!
Why don't you straighten up and fly righteously?
You soil and defame the names
of every clear-eyed, soulful, stand-up
man and woman of conscience
you ever produced.
Every blameless girl and boy
who believed that liberty and justice
was really for everyone.
Why did you betray them?
Why did you blind their vision
with your flag-draped feces,
and sacrifice their trusting souls
to your infernal pits of greed and avarice?

But I also love you, America,
because you have your sights set on
the highest mountain top.
You want to build a ladder to heaven.
You're a dizzy-eyed, spirit-intoxicated prophet,
willing to die to free the enslaved and the oppressed,
and ready to set yourself on fire
for what is right and true and just!

And America,
when you really live your principles,
I am proud and honored
to be part of your family,
but when you fall,
you fall dumbo, sucker-punch hard!

Listen, America,
the word freedom does not have
more than one meaning.
It is not a loophole to be conveniently
laundered by City Hall.
Freedom of religion does not
give you the right to point
your ju-ju bone crucifixes at me.
That buff bearded man on the ceiling
and his skinny, yeshiva-student son
with the funny hat
are not welcome in our halls of justice,
so fuck off!

Wake up, America!
You're asleep at the wheel!
Pay attention to the eye in the pyramid.
You're letting the same
self-righteous cocksuckers
you flipped off 200 years ago
sneak in the back door.

I love you, America
because you look the bully
straight in the eye
and tell him no;
because you refuse to move
to the back of the bus;
because you hold on to your vision
of brotherhood like a pit bull
on a burglar's leg;
because you still care enough
to tell the president
he has no clothes.

And I hate you, America
because you won't stop sucking
at the brain-dead teats of your televisions
long enough to pay attention
to what's really important;
to what's going to impact your life
in a time-frame beyond the next commercial.

God damn you, America!
You've elected the fucking antichrist
to your highest office!
A monkey in a suit
let loose in a gunpowder factory
with his entourage of ghouls and vampires.
A sweaty, pinheaded retard
with a bazooka and a six-pack.
The most inept liar
in the history of politics--
I think a sock puppet
would be more convincing.
If I wasn't so scared
I would never stop laughing.

And once again, America,
you're sending your fine young men off to die
before they've even begun to live,
in order to satisfy the narcissistic,
dick-waving, shit-flinging,
territorial primate vanities
and knee-jerk reptilian reflexes
of withered, dried-up, fossilized old men.
Once again, America,
like cruel father Kronos,
you are jealously devouring your young!
When will you learn your lessons?

And America,
why did you cut off the hands
of your native sons
when they were extended to you in friendship?
Your skyscrapers and super-highways
are built on the crushed bones
of your red, black and yellow children.
Why isn't that fact in your history books?
You confessed to chopping down the cherry tree,
why won't you own up to your
slave-mongering, hatred and genocide?
And it's because I love you, America,
that I, too, hang my head
at the whitewashed memory
of your hidden shame.

I'm not giving up on you, America!
I am loyal and I'm in your corner,
sponging you down and preparing you
for the next bloody round.
We beheaded a tyrant monarch once before,
and now I think it's time
to dust of the guillotine.
Come on, America,
I know you've got some big, hairy,
revolutionary balls
inside those Peter Pan tights!
I know that there's a raging lust
for truth and justice
underneath your coffee, danish
and morning commute.
I know that hiding behind
your tranquilized consumer cocoons
and your paranoid facades of steel and glass
is a planet-sized heart
so filled to the brim
with true brotherly love,
it's just about ready to fucking explode!

David Aronson
December 2005