in your streets broken,
cluttered with the bodies
of the jobless, homeless…
the hungry faces of your children
struck dumb by your apathetic hand….
do you hear? do you see?
do you feel? ….
whose graves will you mark
with your oil tinged pride?
whose god will you worship now?
and who will be left to carry
the heavy mark of your sins?
America….
the fallen!
like fallen leaves beneath weeping trees.
like the sound of the tire
that strikes the stray cat.
like the trembling dark skinned hands
you ban from your voting booths.
like the flag draped caskets
of your sacrificed young.
like the books you burn
with religious fervor….
like the shuffle of boots
in your unemployment lines.
like the faceless ones
in your clinics shutting down.
like the ones who speak out,
then suddenly disappear.
like the crack pipes and needles
of your ‘worthless’ poor….
like the babies born to babies
in your rat infested government housing.
like your Native Americans
in your ‘poverty prisons’….
like the angry young men
you put behind bars.
like the hungry child sleeping
in the back of a broke down car.
like your factory ghosts
haunting empty shells.
like your foreclosed farms,
the fields left to crows.
America,
you who bury your poets,
and dance drunkenly in empty rooms,
neath the shadow of the noose
your indifference tied!