As American As Petting A Bison

Some context for this: 

How To Lose Your Pants By Being Dumb

If I were to become a bully
I’d do my business
righteously, historically.

I’d fill my raging belly
with ghost egret flesh,
drink nothing but spectral bison’s tears,

grow horns
the size of a railroad car
and start looking around

for a bison-petting tourist with 
jeans and blood to spare.
Watch them run away after trying 

to pet me. Thinking
I’m tame. Believing the 
schoolbooks they’d seen.

You’d think I’d have learned
about how such behavior
tends to pan out over time.

You’d think that — and you’d
be wrong. This is mild. It isn’t about 
replicating their history of violence.

There’s a whole country out there
the wants us lovable enough
to keep on a shelf in the living room.

Someone’s got to set them straight
in the name of survival. Put them
pantsless on the hook

for everything 
they never learned in school
or subsequently.

It’s not their fault, you say,
that they bought the myth they were sold.
But it is. It’s not like 

they haven’t been told.
Anyway, I’m starting small.
No need to panic yet. 

Your jeans 
don’t begin to pay off
what was stolen, but it’s a start.