Oh say can’t you see Ms. Liberty?

You should be bending down on your knees,

bending over backwards,

 

Begging Please

 

Begging that your babies stop being shot in the streets

Begging that your babies stop being detained at the boarder

Begging that your babies stop being oppressed for their differences

their sexuality, their gender

 

You can’t bare fruit if you freeze the blossoms before they flower

but my dear, how could you see?

By the dawn’s early light that

your land lays rest to men who believe they can

turn water into wine,

spin gold from twine

When you won’t let your most natural bounty grow

 

What so proudly we hailed as a new start,

hope, freedom, this American Dream

which never availed

just a pipe dream,

gutted clean and locked inside a white picket fence

where a TV loops re-runs of The Andy Griffith Show

 

And at the twilight’s last gleaming

you doused the sparkle in a Syrian boy’s eye

when you let your guys in green drone bomb his home

 

It was an accident

 

You say

for through the perilous fight

your broad stripes and bright stars are gallant,

streaming through the air, combusting at first contact

and gleaming in the blood of fallen bodies

 

You won’t watch o'er those ramparts though

You built up those walls

To you that flesh, those bones

just statistics,

yearly collateral to shovel back in a file cabinet in a dusty room

 

The rockets’ red glare still isn’t bright enough

even though the blood smears their nozzles when they reach the insurgents,

the enemy, the terrorists,

the other human beings split to shreds

 

The bombs, not only do they burst in that air,

they parade through the minds of believing

people

who have bought into your lie,

the proof that if our flag is still there,

everything gets your executive stamp of approval

 

So Lady Liberty, oh say do you see that star spangled banner waving?

Are you free?

Do you feel brave?

Do you know who your land belongs to anymore?