The Red, White, and Blue

In the U.S.A., we ignore our reflection on the TV screen while we grit thirty minutes of sound bites each night,
Scraps of stories served between drug ads from a buffet of Rx’s to help us

EAT SLEEP SHIT PISS

Reducing our anxieties as anchors perform prompted elocutions,
Juxtaposed by an image, a word, a profile of the latest bad seed

BIN LADEN SADDAM

DAHMER MCVEIGH

SUSAN SMITH THE SNIPER AND SO ON

Meanwhile, we fail to recognize the flipside of cameos as Secretary so-and-so clips by,
And the same journalists interview the same journalists with a noose called The News.

Some of us turn on cable to hear a comedic spin after ABC booted Bill Maher.
We download videos from web sites monitored by who-knows-what presidentially
authorized edict to see

THE REAL DEAL

‘Cause we don’t trust puppets hamstrung into embedded reporters.

FLAG DRAPED CASKETS

DECAPITATIONS

AND

BURNT BODIES

Banned from the air by oxymorons like national security.

Nearly half of income tax in the U.S.A. finances blood baths, so are we voyeurs or
participants?
When will we admit our bowl is full of water-down gruel and no longer accept it as food?

When will we return to The Red White and Blue as freedom for all
Within and beyond this post-Emancipation Proclamation nation?

Where we wait to celebrate the centennial anniversary of women’s suffrage,
And wait to elect the first Commander in Chief without a dick or pasty face.

Is The Red White and Blue simply a tool to fool the citizenry into submission with
fraudulent elections?
At which we gape rather than squat the Senate steps shouting

WE WANT THE TRUE

RED-WHITE-AND-BLUE!

Not counterfeited stars and stripes presented to survivors of ambushed soldiers,
Nor flapping flags at half-mast bearing witness to failed erections of Western domination
as U.S. occupation is resisted from Hawai’i to Kabul.

So, I write red across the fabled blue eyes plucked from a lily-white nation marketed by
Hollywood,
A deception perpetuating the perception that Americans look like Mattel dolls.

We ain’t Barbie, Ken, Skipper, or Francie coordinated by years of release and themes.
And we ain’t fabric stitched together by Betsy Ross or in maquiladoras.

Our blood courses red and blue through flesh held together by white tissue.

WE

ARE THE TRUE

RED-WHITE-AND-BLUE

Written by Melissa Dey Hasbrook

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