Dear America
The American Dream is dying
Dear America,
You are dying and you don’t even know it.
Do you hear me?
I have been with you since the beginning.
Do you know who I am?
Conceived in the minds of philosophers, I was birthed on the bloody fields of freedom.
I was the promise for your people, a hope for future generations, and the reason you conquered the world.
Who I am and who I was supposed to be became a contradiction you overcame with the myth you were the greatest of all nations.
I was there when you broke bread with the the First People of this land. And then you gave them blankets infected with smallpox.
In your stories, you painted the indigenous people as different. They were your Indian problem so you made them walk over 5000 miles to a new home. A better home, you said.
Thousands died. You made up for it when you stole their new homes and slaughtered hundreds of thousands more.
I was there in 1619 when the Governor of Virginia, George Yeardley, traded food for 20 black men and women.
Dear America, I was there when you chained millions more.
Together we kept the secret of your success.
You told the world it was American ingenuity and hard work which created the country called the United States of America.
You forgot to mention the millions of indigenous people killed so you can manifest your destiny.
We will not mention the millions of black men and women you whipped, chained, and raped to build America right along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.
Would America be as prosperous without the free labor their slaves provided and the land they stole from the First People?
We both know the answer.
But you say America is different today. Americans are better. We are not racists. Ask President Trump.
You know better.
I counted the fruits of your labor.
I gallop over broken highways, and scrape over rusted trailers, whirl past cans of Old Milwaukee, and watch friends slice wrists on broken bottles of Wild Turkey.
On the wind I rumble between the Black Hills and crumble down frozen thrills.
Do you know me? Have figured out who I am?
I am there watching, always watching.
I see the American story.
At Pine Ridge men are old at forty and dead at 50.
I pass a torn plaid sofa standing against the metal sheeting of a lone mobile home.
Yesterday’s laundry hangs stiff and hard. An ’84 Buick sits with two flat tires, broken windows, and the back seat ripped out.
A grey wire mutt babysits a little boy in a heavy diaper and a Superman pajama top. Dime size scabs hop up and down spider-thin brown legs. A blue and purple canker sore splits open when he cries.
His bottle is dry.
Dog and boy sit under a torn grey tarp that flaps loud and hard. The boy’s hair whips like bee stings across his face and the mutt leans against him for warmth.
Inside momma closes puffed black and blue eyes and prays through swollen lips that Daddy stays passed out with his empty bottle.
The children of Red Cloud die young on the small bit of land they have left.
In this life there is no comfort but me and I am cold.
At night children across America poke into dried green veins, searching, begging, grasping for escape. My escape.
I purr warmly into their ears, “two more squirts of that old Mexican juice will do the job, take you past the White Man’s Happy Hunting Grounds.”
Do you see me? Do you hear me?
Who am I?
Have you guessed my name?
I leave the White Man’s holocaust and slide down black ice highways, to roar over broken homes and fly into the Junkyard City to visit another genocide.
A black woman, a daughter of the new Jim Crow, tucks her babies to sleep on a mattress she found in a dumpster.
Hush boys, don’t you cry none Momma will come back with a morning snack, it’ll be something fun. Keep your eyes closed or I’ll bite your little toes.
Momma pulls both their big toes. They smile and shut their eyes, falling fast asleep. Alone.
While Momma works the nightshift at the 7/11 and her boys hide in the dark, their Daddy sleeps upstate in a cage with other men. He made the mistake of driving while black.
I scream with glee I smile through the miles. Do you know me? Have you seen my guile?
I run wild in the land of the free and home of the brave.
Give me your tired, your poor, the wretched masses yearning to be free. I am hungry and you don’t want them anyway.
I land in middle America right after Sunday service. Love thy neighbor as thyself. But only if you love Trump, God, and guns.
In downtown Mobile, Mississippi boys are taught to be boys, and girls are girls.
Be who want to be but we don’t have to feed you, employ you, look at you, or allow you to use the bathroom unless you have a birth certificate.
After baseball practice Frankie tells his mom and dad he loves Jimmy. Daddy slaps his baby boy’s peach fuzz, “God don’t fucking love no queers. And I ain’t letting no faggots live under my roof.”
After mommy and daddy read the bible and go to bed, Frankie grabs mommy’s bottle of pain pills she has for a 12-year-old ache and swallows. He left a note saying, “this faggot ain’t living under your roof no more.”
God laughs. God loves. And the bible rules, but it’s me that laughs last.
Do you know me? I was in nightclubs when gays were used as target practice.
Have you seen me? I am the reason a billionaire can call Mexicans rapists, ban Muslims, and be President.
The tired and hungry, the desperate and fearful, knock on America’s front door, begging for sanctuary and freedom.
An Orange Man pretending to be President locks brown children in cages as he hides their mothers and fathers.
Steel bars and concrete floors are better than any home. But the children are taken care of, said the Orange President. He did not build the cages, he just fills them.
Do you hear me?
I ride in police cars as their sirens cry out through Chicago, Your boys dead! Your boys dead.
Hundreds of black boys lie dead and Fox News revels in a mother’s pain like slurping Thanksgiving gravy.
Do you hear me, America?
Black men are shot in your streets.
Black women are shot in their beds.
The police say it’s alright. The men who kill are only a few bad apples.
What about the little boy playing in the snow with his sister?
He had a gun in his hand, the police chief said, the officer feared for his life. It was self-defense.
The boy was 12 and he held a toy.
It’s okay. It’s okay. You can fix it.
Walk your streets, and chant Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter!
That will change everything.
America wants to protect men of Color.
I try not to smile.
While you shout and carry signs, the Orange President wants to take a picture in front of church.
He holds an upside down bible.
Tear gas and rubber bullets fly and angry men running like soldiers beat you down, screaming Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter! Make way for the Orange King, make way President Trump!
It’s okay, it’s okay. The stock market is good and your 401k is safe.
Hundreds of thousands died this year as an angry virus blankets the world.
You will not wear a mask while you dance with the Orange President.
That’s okay. That’s okay.
People are dying, you are dying.
It is what it is, the Orange Man said. And the virus will go away in the spring and disappear like magic.
The masks bind your freedom, you cry.
So, take it off, go out to dinner, go to church, and visit your old parents. Winter is coming and you are dying anyway.
Have you figured me out?
Do you know me?
I have been with you since the day you were born.
I am the American Dream.
I was meant to be the hope and promise for the downtrodden, the abused, and the hungry.
My purpose to give freedom and opportunity to every man, woman, and child regardless of color, religion, creed, and gender.
But you destroyed that deal.
America is poor and ruled by a tiny few.
They imprison the black man and tell the angry white man someone is coming to steal their jobs, burn their churches, rape their dreams.
Someone different.
This is the story Trump tells America.
America is separated between them versus us, Republican vs Democrat, black against white, women less than men, Christian against everyone, immigrants stealing from you, and the poor serving a tiny few, serving the rich.
And that is why you are dying.
I see my death soon. The American Dream might never be realized unless you change.
There is still time.
Maybe.
We’ll know after November 3.
