I eat dollar bills for dinner

Dear America,

I am sick.

I am sick and you cannot cure me.

Cynicism has seeped into my core, they poisoned me.

The spawn of pesticides and capitalism and fry grease and materialism festers within me--

I am condemned.

Tie a green ribbon around my lowest bough and wait

For the workers in their yellow vests to come and

Saw straight through me until I am shown for what I am: a phony.

My hands are white and my veins are blue and I bleed red but

I still cringe when I call myself American.

America! Somebody evil is out there!

Somehow they reached into my head with a scalpel and gave me a lobotomy

and now I don’t know the words to our national anthem.

I’m sorry, America, there’s a hole in my brain, America,

While I was scanning for terrorists hidden under hijabs I neglected to notice the one that was

Scooping my inherent patriotism out through my ear and now it’s too late!

 

Dear America,

I’m afraid.

America, do something,

They are stealing our sense of loyalty!

Die for my country? I would not sacrifice my favorite stuffed animal or my oldest pair of sneakers or even the last frappucino in my fridge for my country!

My country? I was born on this soil but I’ve never touched the ground,

Don’t bother sifting through the dirt, you’ll find no trace of me in this barren land.

America, where are you?

I can’t find you amidst all these cogs and washers and wheels.

It is hard to love a country that is not a country anymore but a machine.

The lakes are gone, didn’t you hear? They drained them all and filled them with oil.

They took some TNT to our purple mountain majesties for the sake of progress,

They turned our amber waves of grain into harsh yellow cornstalks,

From sea to shining sea we are nothing but asphalt melting in the unforgiving sun.

Yes, God shed his grace on us,

But they sucked it up, every last bit, with a straw.

 

Dear America,

I am starved.

It’s been a few weeks since my mom started serving dollar bills for dinner,

She says it’s ok, they’re USDA certified organic.

And at first I just pushed them to the side of my plate but now

I savor every bite.

I chew them a thousand times over until they are nothing but a

deep green pulp coating my tongue, I swallow with relish, and when I am done I wonder why

I crave more.

America, nothing satisfies me anymore. I am yearning.

I sleep with the world at my fingertips,

My phone wrapped in my hands and pressed into my chest so hard that there is a 5 by 2 inch rectangle carved into my heart,

But in my dreams I am always alone.

The morning comes, America, bright and blood red.

I rise and shoulder the burden of my future, draped across my shoulders like a cattle’s yoke,

And I sink through the floor until I can feel the soil, gritty on my knobbly knees.

 

This poem is about: 
My country

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