July 2018
NOTE: America the beautiful, the ugly, the proud, the bully, the rescuer, the protector. My America, your America, his America may be as different as each of us is, and yet still be America the Great. Here are just a couple of musings about being in and being American.
shaving america
oh, dear uncle sam
you've grown lean again
letting those howling children
hollow you out
making you forget that
whatever the current distress
you must, you simply must
eat, bathe, and groom yourself
for all of us
we need you, uncle sam
need your rebellious hair
waving white in the breeze
need that familiar goatee
flying like a white badge
of courage, determination
wake up, dear uncle
take the razor of action
to those gaunt cheeks
clean up, shave down
the stubble of aristocracy
that has troubled you
has troubled us too long
raze it down, follow it
with the antidote for bigotry
for selfish oligarchy
restore your fading resolve
with the bracing splash
of lasting truth
how long does it take
to become a real american
not a fake, not an invader
not an illegal, or undocumented
but a real, good-as-a-gold-dollar
american
i can't rightly say
i hear words like 'native american'
and i think i am one
but someone else says no
because my skin is the wrong color
and my ancestors haven't been here
nearly long enough
as if an umpteenth great granddad
born in 1662 in maryland
back before it was even a state
doesn't count. even though
the family has put down roots
from east to west, north to south
across the country i call home.
evidently three hundred and fifty-some years
isn't enough to make me a native
i don't qualify for any
of the hyphenated groups either
the italo-franco-afro-meso-pseudo-americans
who all wear vestiges of culture
in houses full of foreign words
holding on to where they came
no matter how long ago
obviously not natives
just like american indians aren't
really "indians", but rather a figment
of some explorer's imagination
who thought he'd found a better way
from one point to another
no space capsule view to show him
the oversized chunks of real estate
blocking his way to tea and spices
anthropologists have spun their version
of origins of aboriginals, the peoples
and the places they came from
some claiming three waves of migration
others shouting one and only one
with estimated dates to go on
as one theory stands up
another is stood on its head
or so they wish
but the consensus seems to be
that the natives, the indigenous ones
themselves came from elsewhere
ten or fifteen or thirty-five thousands
of years ago, which i suppose
would make it feel like they
have been here forever, though
they may not have started here at all
will my far-in-the-future descendants
finally be able to stake a claim
to being americans, true heirs
to the title of native
or will there be by then
no america to care about at all
© 2018 j.lewis
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