Playing John Wayne to Quakers

Playing John Wayne to Quakers

The ticker tape
and amber flagons
are thick
on pavements swept by
slaves
like my grandpa and me,
waged and aged
once working poor
who now beg
at the feet of Sam Walton
for bread.

I see veterans of Standard
wars
limping black lunged
and proud,
never yellow just
slightly orange
from the piss
and Schlitz
it takes to suck back
slurs
to a Roman crest bled
and blued for,
bought with teeth, brains
and guts.
Heroes see their anguish pawned
to prop
rotten card sharks.

There is no other, only them
the lizard kings
with their horse toothed cuirassiers
playing us off against our own.
We're orphans in chicken wire
when we should
be fathers and sons,
daughters, queens
noble and fair
righteous fury our countenance
counting pennies to
pay the ransom
of another week with heat and canned
beets.

Rage infinite and raw
my throat red from screaming
tears streaming
as I watch my mother suffocate
in a plastic tent built
from debt, shame,
and Marlboro tar.
I see my father broken,
ground glass,
Xanax
and whiskey cups
gasoline on his hands
as the bullets he spent against
Vietnamese children
haunt his every waking day.

This land is not your land,
this land is not my land,
what once was made for you and me
is gone
and has been
since before I knew
America
wasn't synonymous
with
Paradise
and Ronald Reagan
didn't have a hotline
to God.

Contrary to popular myth Jesus
doesn't smile
on moneychangers
and Vegas may not be
a City on a Hill
but it's our paradigm,
a temple with the clap,
a house tab,
and enough stale nukes
to play John Wayne
to Quakers.