years and years of american fears

this food lays in my belly the wine suspended above bubbles of a gaseous diaspora while the colored boys run to see their necks stretched again in the pinafore skirts and lollipops of white girls under the age of that age this my century o lazurus who died and rose and died again for our unknown sins that evil lice spread while the indians sang amazing grace that old hymn on the road to their graves as the blues shot the greys and everyone played cards in saloons where the judge called the tunes that we danced and we danced in the night of no moon women and men stepping out and leaving our boot prints in the dust of places that don't exist because we marched our millions of soles in lockstep for this is our country each life and each death each slave and each brute for unto each is it written that nothing is given without the salute for the guns knives bombs and parades topped off by a sailor's big kiss just to sell magazines and these faces and tears treaties and pleas anger and anguish in the names we've unnamed and the peoples denied sent to visions of hell where the earth opens up and the devil says put some bling on her butt a cross on her neck and nylons on her thighs so say hello to the burqa say hello to islam say hello to your karma say hello to alarm for this is the world that your fathers have made and your mothers approved a world of nothing but pictures to entertain and amaze a world formed for the insane so my stomach's upset with food no one but no one knows I don't need a pain a sting a rebuke a crime and a craze where what I eat sends a message of waste and disease and of lies that I know we'll repeat to the end of my days