The North Coast times-eagle., July 01, 2005, Page 6, Image 6

PAGE 6
WHEN THE PRESIDENT TALKS TO GOD
LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN
When the President talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our women’s rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the President talks to God?
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
When the President talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God says ever change his mind
When the President talks to God?
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed —
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
When the President talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed?
Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed
When the President talks to God?
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.’’)
When the President talks to God
I wonder which one plays the better cop
We should find some jobs, the ghetto’s broke
No, they’re lazy, George, I say we don’t
Just give ’em more liquor stores and dirty coke
That’s what God recommends
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek —
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
When the President talks to God
Do they drink near-beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess God just calls a spade a spade
When the President talks to God
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean —
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today — O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I am the one who dreamt our basic dream
In that Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home —
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black* Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
GERALD MOSS
I doubt it
POETRY
I doubt it
-C O N O R OBERST (‘BRIGHT EYES’)
TAKE HIM OUT OF THE BALL GAME
OUR REVOLUTION
our revolution
dried dreams into paper scattered
in gusts of unanswerable questions,
it scooped up stars from an eastern sky
just to prove they were imitation diamonds
junked in a downtown pawnshop,
it supplanted your memory
with molotov cocktails stored in mason jars,
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs w e’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay —
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again —
The land that never has been yet —
And yet must be — the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine — the poor man’s, Indian's, Negro’s, ME
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose —
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain —
All, the stretch of these great green states —
And make America again!
LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967)
When the President talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he’s not?
That the voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the President talks to God?
it kicked down the latticework of thousands
of embracing vines with steel-toed boots
to be used for kindling,
it shot a hole right through a sunflower
sending seeds into a chaos of black crows
pecking at shells,
White, greased face
draped in red, white, and fool,
Six hundred dollar seat has yankee dandy,
Mr. Doodle
He knows RBIs and ERAs, and spits peanuts
cuz he’s cool
Doodle is a patriot should anybody doubt.
Drinks iced Bud Lite,
hates the Red Sox as a rule
Course Doodle Junior’s in Baghdad
wearing borrowed Kevlar and driving a truck
Yesterday he killed a young looter carrying a wooden stool.
It was a shame
Doodle doesn’t vote or read the evening press
Earns minimum wage at the neighborhood pool
Doodle wants to retire before he’s seventy-five
But a patriot like Doodle is too valuable a tool.
it eclipsed passion with the cold-blooded
fist of irreverence and cast an anemic shadow
over the future,
its leopard teeth ripped the meat from my bones
and then fractured my skeleton against a wall
of indifferent bricks,
it rolled out of our tongues into giant runways
for fighter planes and squadrons of metallic flies,
it yanked away the net and then cut the trapeze ropes
as you hung by your knees and I spun off into a triple somersault
in an amphitheater of suspended faces,
it stole the script lines and turned up the hue, tint,
and volume of a television soap opera,
-N A N C Y HOFFMAN
THE FLAG FLAP
Some raise the flag, salute and pledge;
Pretend symbol is solution
To problems posed by patriots.
I hold up the Constitution;
Not symbol, but document and law;
Propose the wavers waiver not.
Uphold the words (the fatal flaw),
The purpose purposely forgot.
-LA R R Y BARROWS
CALL THE HOUR
it packed up your boxes in one afternoon,
It’s the last night of July,
9 p.m., the sun almost gone from sight
closing out high summer
the air clear as water,
it measured desire against truth.
but I watered the paper with ink, the diamonds found their ways
into treasure boxes, the mason jars exploded in your own mind,
the wood lured our rage into a pit of ash, earth enveloped the
seeds to harvest new flowers, the fist opened into a hand made
to work, my bones healed crooked and more strong, our runways
sank into oceans of speechless kisses, the trapeze act flew off
into the dreams of retired clowns, the TV picture tube blew
and applied for a library card, the crones recorded an album,
you opened all of your boxes, and the scale of truth and desire
teetered for weeks
because, it was not, after all, the war to end all wars,
but rather a mutiny of passions, and the grand pageant of our
imperfections
and nine strong bells from City Hall
call the hour; this hour when
sky will blacken and offer
stars and a white moon. Violet is
the air’s color now, a deepening
purple lastlight caught with the bells
in swaying uppermost branches of elms,
all a glory and clamor
of change stirring
in the windy bowl of high branches,
in the black leaves, a new darkening,
insight, revolution
-JUANITA HUEBNER
-CYNTHIA HOYT