America the Beautiful
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
--Katharine Lee Bates
--1913
It's a great song. But times have changed...
America the Ugly
America, America
We've sung this song for you
America, America
We've forgotten if it's true |
Sky Eye (Click on image for full size version)
Spacious skies
once so beautiful
now soot-stained
filled with fumes
molecular soup
brewed in a cauldron
too globally warm
chemical change
America, Amerika
a nation turns its
reddened eyes from you
Tears flow
from those eyes
as air once clean
becomes clean only
by act of a government
that has lost the meaning
of words bathed
in the acid of corruption
so that the nation
loses its purpose
and our way |
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Amber Waves (Click on image for full size version)
America, Amerika
Amber waves the grain.
I'm just not sure
what's saying
goodbye.
Maybe it's the grain
genetically modified
monsantofied
at least gone
from the bellies
of too many
of the people
of this once great land
from Gulf Coast
to Appalachian valley.
Possibly it's the nation
deserting the greatness
the fertile land
deserves
and its founders
intended.
In forcing democracy
on others
we have lost
our own.
Probably it's both. |
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Gold in Them Thar Hills (Click on image for full size version)
Purple mountains
or any color once majestic
now leveled rock crushed
for oil
or hollowed out
emptied of coal
except where it burns
or blown apart
in the search
for fancy rocks
America Amerika
The weapon
that destroys the mass
is fueled by the lives
of men too poor
badly educated and so ill-treated
lubricated by the greased palms
of partisan self-interest
and naked incivility
of so-called servants
and dangerously driven
by the avarice
of men too rich |
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| Food? (Click on image for full size version)
At the edge
of forests healthy
for everything
but animals or trees
lie the fruited plains
blistered with toxins
alchemically nurtured
in a liquid
roughly water strange brew
what's inside of you
America Amerika
Groves of blemished trees
bearing produce
invisibly bruised
dripping venomous juices
like Snow White's apple
We are fashioned
into laboratory mice to ascertain
how much poison
we can consume
and remain vaguely human
while we are forced
to pay exorbitant fees
for what passes
as our health |
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God's Eye (Click on image for full size version)
I do not set aside
the grace of God,
for if righteousness
could be gained
through the law,
Christ died for nothing!"
--Gal 2:21
God sheds grace on us?
The shedding of grace
has a human face
We are graced with hunger
to measure our sense of charity
We are graced with poverty,
to challenge us
to solve economic
inequity and despair
We are graced with pestilence
but also graced
with the scientific curiosity
necessary for us
to defeat disease
We are not graced with war
That is our doing
it is our responsibility to end it
We are not graced with greed
which is rather a byproduct
of the rotting
of human souls
We are not graced
with the false profiteers
who use religion
to tear us apart
when its purpose
is to bring us together
to give us common bonds
under our separate roofs
God sheds tears for us
tears of frustration
of shame and contempt
of anger and outrage
of pain and disgust
at what people have done
in God's name
God sheds no grace now
America Amerika
We have spurned
the grace of God |
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| Skin Tones (Click on image for full size version)
They lack a sense
of brotherhood
toward so many kinds of people
for union members
for whom it has
special meaning
for immigrants of any kind
legality be damned
for those whose roots
weren't cultivated
in the appropriate loam
kinship even denied
with their own children
if they happen to be queer
no empathy felt
for those whose skin tones
haven't been created
recently enough
by lounging in the sun
nor sympathy for people
whose cupboards are too bare
from one day to the next
If you don't believe
what they believe
then to hell with you
America Amerika
There is no crown
for there is too little good
to place one upon |
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America, America
After o so many years
America America
For you we weep our tears--Robyn Elaine Serven |