America

What is America?

America is

Long shifts

Three jobs

Free

Hard

Equal

Bells ringing.

I hear no bells ring today.

Thirteen million

who are seeking work

must sit at home today

waiting for those bells to ring.

Waiting for their shift to start

Waiting to work three jobs 

to send their kid to college.

Today I see Southern Blacks 

loosing their right to vote through the 

state legislatures who are supposed to protect them.  

America is a land of 

the strongest.

America lies broken,

silent bells,

foreclosed houses

homeless shelters flooded with people.

Let us ring these bells today.

Let my generation break out of the sins

of Fanny May and Freddy Mack.

And let us move forward and vote out the bigots

in state legislatures and even

in Congress today.

America is standing still.

Let us ring those bells

Get back to work.

Invent.

Or perhaps,

they will ring 

forever no more.

Junkyard

I walk down and see

four hundred fords in front of me.

But these fine cars have not been used

only mused

upon and turned away.

Today not many cars sell

nor did they 

then, when 

one third of americans 

sat unemployed.

In the horizon though

I see hope

And my hope lies not in the hands of a pope.

My hope lies in the strong American hands who built those cars.

Who work every day

or 

Seek it every day.

I see hope in the horizon today too.

The trees will start to blossom after this cold cold winter.

Rise

What happens if we give up?

What happens if we stop doing applications every day.

What if we simply blame others.

Fat-cats.

The 1%.

Congress.

But we ourselves are 

just as much to blame

if we we sit and complain.

Lets rise up as a nation,

as a people

like the sun.