The Unraveling

My dear patriotic America—
my most gracious, red-white-and-blessed America—
my benevolence who bestows access,
whose generosity shines bright for all posterity
and echoes through the rotted halls
of plantations and detention centers—

I am not a guest in your house.
Your home sweet home.
Your gated community.
Your country club for all who ace your test.

You do not run a charity here—
where you feast on civil rights
and swipe them like crumbs from your table.

And now—
you expect bowed heads,
thankful hearts,
from the ones you’ve wounded?

At a time when dignity is being denied
to sacred bodies thrown in
armored vans like refuse?
When voices rise in grief,
you sermonize about how “ungrateful” the tears are?

Why those very tears,
they are to clarify your vision—
not cloud it.

Democracy.
Civil rights.
Due process.
And yes—your favorite: Freedom—
You call them privileges,
earned by those you deem respectable.

What is left?
What remains unprotected by your laws?
Oh—nothing.

The birthrights of all humanity.
Holy obligations we owe one another—
not favors to be hoarded and rationed.

That unraveling myth
might mean it’s time to burn the script—
the one Aunt Judy and Uncle Jim
have clutched like gospel
for far too long.

It is they who owe.
They owe truth.
They owe repair.
They owe equity.
They owe a reckoning.

And when those of us
cast in shadow,
shut outside the gate,
drowning in forsaken flooded alleys
and forgotten concentration camps—

finally hear truth—
not just in words and slogans,
but in the broken pride
of candles flickering in the night—
and the code of the land declares
what was true from the beginning...

Then maybe
we can all celebrate,
with tears—of joy,
at the dawn morning light of integrity.

And sing an anthem of belonging—
our own proof through the night.

But not now.
Not without—proof.

The bombs burst.
The banner—
it is a beast.

And what will not die is the truth.

And it is not here
to serve.
Your comfort.