America
After Allen Ginsburg

America,
I have given you all
and now I am in debt,

America,
I like you,
but not the same way you like me.
Nothing can love with that much artillery.

America,
I like peach flavoring
but I don’t actually like peaches.
I go to Las Vegas to go to Rome
and I go to Rome to be disappointed.
I prefer incandescent lighting
to the sun.

America
you wear your disasters
like a merit badge
you are such
a shitty boy scout.

America,
Your national flower is the mushroom cloud.
Your national bird is the predator drone.
Your national tree is the watchtower.

Heart disease is the national health problem,
Credit default swaps the national addiction,
Comfort is the national death
and I feel so patriotic.

America,
why do I have to
take out a mortgage
on a burial plot?
It was too expensive to be born
and now I can’t afford to die.

America,
When are you goin to add “YOLO”
to the Pledge of Allegiance?
When are you going to add
“Till the sweat rolls down my balls”
to the national anthem?

America,
when you shove the barrel
of your gun
into my mouth like that
I suddenly lose my appetite.
Bullets have no nutritional value.

America,
you get drunk off of crude oil
suffer insurgency hangovers.
I think that it’s time
we had an intervention,
time we had a heart-to-heart.

America,
you are so great at building walls,
on your southern border, you have 1,951 miles of walls
When are you going to start building roofs?
When are you going to start building homes instead?

America,
your bigotry has become so subtle,
but there is no difference
between a chainsaw
and a scalpel
when you’re removing
all the vital organs.

America,
All of my food tastes like choking.
All of my shirt collars
fit like fingers
grasping for revenge.
Why do you install suicide nets on the walls of your factories
rather than designing wings?

America,
you are a cheap plastic imitation
of Europe
made in China
and I wonder
where I’m actually from.

America,
I do not love the skin I am in.
I am not everywhere I want to be.
I am not lovin’ it.
I am not kid-tested, mother approved.
I do not want to just do it.
She is born with it, America,
and Maybelline has nothing to do with it.

America,
this is serious,
I’m going to level with you,
I’m going to get down to business.
I’m going to roll up my sleeves.
I’m going to burn the midnight oil,
I’m pulling myself up by my bootstraps
I’m putting my nose to the grindstone,
and my queer shoulder to the wheel.

America,
I have heard so much
about this “dream,”
why do you keep dreaming?
when will you wake up?