Kate Smith Talks Back to the Mirror

America, and I'm not agreeing

with you but remember when

we were young, and I could still

jump high enough to catch

lightning bugs in a jar without coughing?

 

You looked so beautiful then

in the gloaming, the way you wore

your trees half unbuttoned. It was no

accident when your leaves fell in that

ancient ritual. Years passed like years,

 

and not some nostalgic Waltonesque memory

for the good times. America, we didn't

need to laugh or cry on cue. This was before

we took you to the streets, slapped you

silly, battered you with tear gas, made bruises

 

of your silly anthem. Do you remember

how we ducked and covered, stacked

cans of Spam in backyard bunkers,

played Combat for ant hills and bid you

sweet dreamsicles? Those were the days,

 

eh America? We worried over times

tables, not your ugly restricted lunch

counters and nightmare sheets. Life

could be a dream, ba-dum, ba-dum,

but you didn't take us up to paradise,

 

you dragged us screaming across oceans

and into burning rice paddies, all the time

singing about amber waves of grain

while Billy and Dave and Leroy

from Algebra lay face down in those

 

rice paddies never again to wake

by the dawn's early light. So excuse me

for being tired of your strident platitudes,

your moral majority, your go-get-em,

a*s-kickin, yeehaw optimism. I need a nap

 

now, America. I'm getting too old

for this roller coaster nationalism.

Turn off the light on your way out,

would you, and we'll both say a prayer

that God will bless somebody, somewhere.  

Reviews

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Kate Smith was a demi-goddess in my Irish American family
along with Jackie Gleason and Red Buttons.
Just now listening to Patti Smith rage against war.
Gosh, I was a young one and a member of the Yippies.
Abbie Hoffman is one of my only real heroes and cripes
he was so much fun! People should only know how much
Demerol we fed our pig candidate for President to get it
to be docile.

I expect you spent summers in the Catskills to have
caught fire flies so freely.

You kept yourself in this poem.
I'll be back for more.
You have talent. Plus only a few could have
caught that Phil Ochs reference.
That's rather precious.
And thanks for your read and fine review.
Jack



.

[Tim McGovern]

the ghost of Ginsberg lives
It's a " Howl" though restrained, I would change " ba-dum" to " sha-boom" to be musically correct, otherwise you are right, one of the best things you've written.
Need I mention I agree?
Wonderful work shemeh
Namaste'
Tim