A Semiquincentennial Declaration |
Note: I wrote this poem as a way of reflecting on and grappling with this country's 250th anniversary and the time of existential crisis we are in, both as a nation and a species. It is a poem of rage but also of love and aspiration. It is an offering and a declaration about this country's history, our present moment, and our potential. I offer this poem-essay as part of what I hope will become a new declaration of independence and interdependence.
On your two hundred and fiftieth birthday, let us speak openly.
Oh, say something nice, you say.
Don’t rain on this flash-bang parade.
You contain multitudes of fine, decent people.
Folks who will pick you up when you’re broken down.
Who’ll rescue you from a flood or a fire.
Who’ll give you a buck or the shirt off their back.
They’ll welcome you into their homes, share their food.
They’ll help you raise a barn or put out a fire.
Friendly, good-hearted folk.
Then there’s this land, our land, erupting in soul-stirring beauty.
Towering mountain crags thrusting into horizon-splitting skies.
Canyons painted in sediments of red, orange, sienna, and crimson.
Ancient ridges hued in purple and blue, sloping and slouching into infinity.
Oceans of grain prairies, their amber waves swaying.
A resplendent and bountiful terrain fruiting more than enough for everyone.
Come to America, its vast cornucopias will seed and feed you.
Give us your tired, your poor, and we will raise them from the floor.
You told us to stand up, take off our hats, put our little right hands on our chests, and “pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America… one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
You commanded us to love the flag, the God, the country.
Broad stripes, bright stars, and perilous fights.
You insisted we are free and brave, uniquely blessed with happiness and liberty.
Bombs bursting in air from dawn’s early light to twilight’s last gleaming.
We are the best, the greatest, the most exceptional, you said.
We are blessed and fortunate to be Americans, you said.
Nobody is like us. Everybody wants to be like us.
You speak of freedom. Of liberty.
Are we free of wars, of racism, of sexism, and homophobia?
Are we freed by your bombs bursting across the world’s airs?
Does that star-spangled flag wave proudly for all your global slaying?
Did America become free and brave by decimating Vietnam?
Did we become liberated by eviscerating Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran?
Have your unrivaled invasions and coups set us free?
Or maybe liberty arrived back in 1776 like you keep reminding us,
When we were free at last, thank god almighty, from kings and colonizers,
All those liberating muskets, canons, and armies powered by genocide and slavery.
America, your gold and your flag are soaked in centuries of blood.
In 1852, Frederick Douglass asked, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” He answered: “a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
America, how many victims will you claim in your fraudulent name?
How many victims does it take to purchase our “freedom”?
Did your endless wars buy freedom for all of us?
This truth is self-evident: Not all freedoms are created........