Oh, Say

 

The American dream

 

Overextend the company

Charge more for products

Reduce services

Pay people less

Try to eliminate benefits, so-called

Maybe get raided by another firm

Everyone is fired

Move on

 

Wait, what?

 

What happened to Knute Rockne

And Jim Thorpe?

Horatio Alger

And the poor match girl?

(wait—she died)

The lives of Harriet Tubman

(whose image we pretend will go

on a twenty, yeah, someday)

Sojourner Truth

The words of Frederick Douglass

Susan Anthony

 

And to those

Asian and Latinx

Black and even white

In museum heritage

Or not known at all

Who made it?

 

What is it?

A home, a family

A car unless there’s good transit

In the city

Enough possessions

Something to pass on

Assets, among them

A good story

 

Justice enough

Truth enough

Faith a little more

Love more than that

 

A choice

A say

A vote

 

That’s some dreaming

That was here a while ago

But I can’t find it in my pockets

Or outside where I hear

The pundits

And pretenders

Evoking bitterness

And gorge onto

What should be a better scene

With sapling promises all

Planted, taken care of

 

Back to basics?

No such thing

Even on a good day

You like basics?

Me, too—guarantee of shelter

Food and opportunity

And, yes, I’ll say it

Say it with me

Freedom

 

I like reenactments

They rarely bleed

But some real blood might have to be

Spilled again

Before we’re through in

Or with

The world

And we understand what the world

Has been through with us

And a different ecumenism’s called for

 

Once we understand ourselves,

We’ll have to apply again

And take part

No longer the whole

That’s for villains in poor novels

And movies

 

So here’s the thing:

Forward to the basics

As in feed everyone

Learn democracy

Not from demagogues

Vote again

Rescind hatred

Don’t make it a crime,

Simply something lacking reason

Not to mention humor

 

We can learn how to laugh again

Without the grime

Without the fall

We can honor heritage

More so legacy

In festivals

 

Happy Birthday, USA

We can make it

If we try

 

C L Couch

 

 

covering the National Mall

User:Lipton sale, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60460085