America has been my celebrity crush

Since the bubbles-and-pinwheel days

I liked to gaze at the picture books

Of white-blond wheat in Indiana haze

Purple mountains, those rich blue seas,

Skyscraping billions that leave me weak at the knees.

Teeth-gritting, gun-slinging

Heroes of my heart

Flag-waving, pie-making

Navy-white kick-start.

Glued to my tabloid textbook

(America did what?! Hot)

And sighing because wild-as-a-filly

Big-hearted, warm-smiled, bad boy

Country called Sam wanted me

 

This melting pot wanted everyone

Said my schoolgirl lunchbox days.

Adored his sprawling bison kids

Over his fair settlers, smiled sunshine rays

Hugged up his hacienda-and-bean babies

Lifted up his newcomers, dark and farming

Waved liberty to those ship-borne joy-bundles.

No child is perfect, they make their own jungle

Of jealousy and ills, cookie-snatching rage

But they come back together

In our grown-up age.

 

Sam’s at war, didn’t you know?

Said my school-dance cell-phone days

He never loved his children from Allah

He’d bomb their temples, smoked and razed

He fell in love with oil and her money

Her diamonds and cabanas, sick-spiked honey

He hates himself and his two sides

Red or blue? He can’t decide

And he couldn’t stand his newcomers, dark and farming

Keeps them hidden, hungry, told me they were harming

His white-blond wheat trembles under bills

Those rich blue seas said good-bye after a spill

I read his news with a wetter eye

At his greed and his drones to spy

He can’t seem to love the children coming

From ships and seas, holding and humming

Desperate are they, wealthy is he

Never there was the wink of the celebrity.

 

America has not been divine

Says my future-looking millenium days

United under God yet divided by “mine!”

A hearth for some, for others a blaze

But deep down this land-chased-after-

By-other-lands, this nation-forest-sea-lebrity

Waves with his waves and wants me

It’s never been black-and-white

Whether he’s in the wrong or in the right

Whether he was first in my heart

Or ripped my idealized world apart, and

He is one messed-up, paranoid, violent country but

He’s my messed-up country

And I’ve seen the rainbow sunflower he was created on

And I want to bring it out

 

Sam, I’m rolling up my sleeves for you

I say in my future-looking days

Money will be knocked from glory

Paranoia, from the oratory

Make a home, not territory, and

You will house the brave and free again.