American dreams
Patriotism, here at least, is supposed to be more
than mere location, more than coordinates on a map,
borders enclosing a color.
This country is an idea, a vision, a goal.
It holds a lamp more than a flag,
a flame like a burning heart aloft,
like a lighthouse in a world of storms.
It sings in many tongues, and dreams in more.
It is the soil and the tiller of the soil,
the factory squatting like a dinosaur
and the worker leaving there exhausted
to fall into a house of children fed
and clothed, gathered under a roof
they are always anxious to leave.
It is a brawl and an embrace, a riot
of love and hate and disagreement,
and it comes together after,
or it does not work at all.
It is the deacon and the atheist,
the spinster and the whore,
the florid, ranting businessman
and the self-inflated professor.
It is all of us, separate and one.
It sings in many dreams, and looks for more.
This country is always searching for the coast
where the wanderer finally is fulfilled,
and the plain which calls for crossing.
It is the plump and vacuous bourgeoisie
and the bony and vicious rebel,
both of them hungry, willing to feed
on each other -- and it is, nonetheless,
the hand tossing a dollar it could use
into a box or bucket to feed the poor.
I'm beginning to think that sometimes
this country can contradict itself.
It is dream and the failure to dream.
It is all the rhetorical claims for what it is
(including this one) and what those claims
fall short of, and what they reach for,
and it is always still becoming, new
in a brash, uncertain, cold, sweet way.
It's what we're given, and didn't earn --
and what we can earn by passing it on,
the secret of fire and light, important
not because we have it and hold it,
but because we hold it out, for us
and others to reach for, to hold.
It is dream and the dream of dreaming.
It is the sleeping giant child of the future,
with the power to save or doom the world.
It is us. And we need to be the gift that we were given.
the death of the Bandit Queen
Vengeance is the virus
that infects the flesh-bound,
brothers and sisters
ripping each other
for being ripped.
Perennials blossom
red and bright in the heart
with roots that twist and knot,
sucking the moisture,
demanding always more.
She was, from the news stories,
raped, and returned to the scene
to exact the price of those
who happened to be there
for those who were not.
We see ourselves on film:
the rifle and bandanna, the smile.
Never the rape, never
the confusion of those
who paid for another's crime.
How would we have talked to her?
We who read her story, and go
down the hall to the elevator,
remember minor violations
as if there were one common coin.
© 2008 JB Mulligan
