Obamarama

When America opened Ellis Island for its immig-
ration ration, it didn’t offer to bring those muddled
asses true ad-liberty, e-quality and fat-earn-ity,
but they got it. You got it! Then this supersized superpower
was usurped in the hour between the first and second tower.

A woman sat on the bus from Montgomery, Alabama,
December 1955. An Americafrican by dissent, Rosa parked
herself in a seat meant only for Whites. She was Kilimanjaro
disguised as a seamstress. She budged not an inch.
She stitched up the Klan and started a boycott. Sparked
a riot of rage at her bus stop, where the black buck stopped.

When America’s 1960 U2 Black Lady tour bombed
after playing tick with MiGs and I-Spy with ICBMs,
the KGB made a POW of Powers and the old Cold War
escalated faster than the rush in Krushchev.

When the me in America met the us in Russia,
offshore Cuba, ’62, trigger fingers hovered over
the but in button but deployment of Misguided Missiles
was averted by calming the egos of nations in negotiations.

Because the i in America accepted the lone shooter posit
in Depository, shunning Zapruder and sassy Knoll theorists,
the sin in assassin stayed singular when Oswald swallowed
the Ruby bullet and a small child saluted a riderless horse.

Viet Cong spooks dug foxholes in Nixon’s subconscious.
Conscientious students were shot in Clark Kent State, Ohio,
as William Calley, Lieutenant Shithead’s collateral thinking
caused all the damage and damaged the cause, while those who
survived both Tet and Long Tan tell My Lais about Vietnam.

The art of Martin Luther’s rhetoric resided in the lack in black,
the kin in King and the mend in amendment. Whereas a white
Englishman warned of rivers of blood, an American negro spoke
only of rivers. He dreamed the dream. The dream came true
and altered the hue of the American panorama.

O, Rosa! O, Langston! O, Bama!