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My America 
        "There died a myriad... For a botched civilization"
                                                                                -Ezra Pound

Looking at you these fallen days (or me in the mirror) 
I join the ranks of your disappointed admirers
We are no longer saving the world
we are saving our jobs
Frankly, I am sick of the whole 'greatest country in the world' chest-thumpery
and if there were somewhere else to go I would go there
but (still true) if you are not part of the solution
you are part of the problem 
and I know which part I am

America, my transcendental gender-free inamorata, you are my sole support
I am one of your pensioned ex-lovers, as  
glimpsed in the film version of what-we-now-really-are, walking the boardwalk 
somewhere desolate, like Atlantic City, 
the New Jersey Crimea, sucking up air like one of Chekov's washed-up emigres,
after the rodeo, after the gold rush, after the film festival, the short-series Conventions,
after the failed uprising, after the media has packed up and gone home
to spend a quiet evening in the hotel with their phones 

one of your disappointed vampires in need of a bloody fix, 
scanning the pre-dawn streets for Ginsberg set-piece atrocities,
the best minefields of America, dodging gunned-up, hyped-up, trumped-up 
scaredy-cops shooting black men because we are afraid of black men
(why shouldn't we be? given all we have done to them?)
and are of course still doing with fanny-pats of approval from race-card Republican judges

America, ghoulish dreamboat, ancient lover gone in the teeth,
eager for wounds to lick cuz you like the taste
you grow comfortable with the deaths of others
They are dying in Aleppo
Other countries (nursing their own broken mirrors) ask, 
"What are they are thinking in America?"
They are not thinking in America
Thinking is not done in America,
some calculation of course, some texting, some advertising,
some truly boorish emoting
It's always about us, isn't it?
If not, then why are you bothering me? 

My America! after the big affair, after the ball is over, 
your kick-line of sulky dwarfs cleaning up behind the parade
You were young once
We were all young once
Your bright young men wore wigs and tight pants, showed a leg
Ladies learned to smoke, swear, dance and dip to apocalyp-stick swingtime 
America, your century is over
You open your faded arms to tinpot dictators, 
make eyes at banana republics, don the latest looks from funhouse mirrors,
worship pigs who despise everything you ever stood for  
 
... all for a botched democracy, a menopausal male 
gone grouchy in the knees, stiff in the frontal lobe 
You have no use for carping critics 
who spend time spooning with their buddy Google, 
the single pop culture lightweight who can stand their company
Write me a check and I'll get out of town



My America (2)


My America, however, is a guy with a distinctly 'different' name 
that is to say clearly not Anglo-Saxon (a tongue with more than enough funny names
of its own), for example banjo player 'Bela Fleck'
combining Hungarian roots with the Appalachian mountain music that now defines his instrument,
itself a melding of deep-flowing currents, Celtic, English, African-American
Who travels to Africa to trace the banjo's genealogy 
in hide-covered stringed instruments brought here by slaves 
In the film* you can see the respect in his eyes as his fingers work to copy 
a finger-picking rhythm pecked at hummingbird speed by a Malian guitar player
and the respect in the eyes of the African players of the akonting 
(a three-stringed, long-necked banjo antecedent)
as they see what Fleck can do with the modern version 


The country, that is, of Yo-Yo Ma, Lang Lang, my Quincy neighbors 
whose grandfathers visit to play basketball with preschool grandsons,
the lady who shouts with the half-dozen words we share that I have 
planted my garden in the wrong place. 'What are these?' she points. 'Nothing to eat?' 
The country of my wife's grandfather Meier who escaped the czar's army 
to carry a sewing machine to work in Brooklyn
My close-mouthed father, born here in unlucky times, 
who never once in our hearing spoke a word of his Depression childhood, 
but survived to give us what he lacked and carried his secrets to the grave
The Nisei soldiers who stormed up mountains in Italy to take Nazi forts
while their parents were interned somewhere in the ambivalently 'Great' Plains,
and those with names like DiMaggio whose mothers were forced to register each year
as enemy aliens and whose travel-restricted fathers could no longer visit their sons' restaurants
while they fought in Europe and the Pacific 
Of citizen Khizr Khan, whose officer son died protecting those who served under him 
in Afghanistan,
a country much like this one in having too many wars. (My America can be improved.)
And Zarif Khan, who founded an Afghani community in of all places Wyoming, 
by taking advantage of a collection of opportunities such as the ranch-hands' pent-up demand 
for fresh tamales, the stock market, freedom of travel, the right to vote, 
found perhaps nowhere else but in these United States 

Of Darlene Love who went from house cleaner, to backup singer, to contributing 
"Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," to the nation's permanent holiday playlist 
The country where an author (Barbara Ehrenreich) 
could write a book titled "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America"
and not be hounded by Putin's police  
Of Cesar Chavez, Joan Baez, Sonia Sotomayor, Roberto Clemente, Rita Moreno

A country of 'climbing-up' ordinary heroes, open minds, thinkers and doers, money makers and  music makers
with names our own Moms and Dads never heard of,
but learned to play nice with for the good of the whole, e pluribus unum 
transcending the clans and tribalisms that set other worlds on fire
because we were the others, the strangers, the newcomers once, the genuine alien nation

*"Throw Down Your Heart," 2008