Even Worse Poetry
And now, for anyone who has forgotten why I should be neither a poet nor a political commentator, I offer my latest poem (also available replete with graphics from a link off of my poetry page).
We are a nation with attention deficit disorder,
the glories of our short past
blinding us to the phenomenal failures
of our present.
We remember our Independence Day,
the Shores of Tripoli
and the Battle of Normandy
but not, apparently,
McCarthyism, Vietnam or Watergate.
Slavery is a thing of our past,
yet we clamour for
an “ownership society”
in which corporations own us.
We champion free trade
and turn a blind eye to the corruption
of Enron and Halliburton and countless others;
in the name of profit, there is no such thing as sin.
We offer freedom and Democracy
in the form of occupying armies.
We choose to ignore the nuances of other cultures
and instead try imprinting the world with our own,
by whatever force necessary.
Freedom or death, but at what cost to us?
Corruption of Democracy offends us
but only in foreign lands;
at home, it is bitter grapes
and the whine of sore losers.
God is on our side — we’ve told Him so.
So our cause is just, our aim is true
and whatever the means
they are justified by the end.
Our Lady Liberty stands ashamed
brought low by an arrogant, vainglorious
America.
