How to be a white American
this year: shift your stance

and consider the view of the drain
from inside the drain.

Think of a sunrise viewed from here
where sunset’s in progress. Bend down

and smell the thrown rocks, the landed bricks,
tear gas floating across the soil.

Get out of the hold
your skin has on you: armor

you may have counted on,
tattooed spells of protection

you say you never knew existed — 
and if you admitted that you knew,

you denied
that you could read them.

It’s not fun here right now.
It’s not going to be fun,

not supposed to be fun.
Never fear: you will someday

dine and screw
and find joy in small things

as always. Just don’t 
try to shift back

to where you were standing
before all this:

the ground there won’t be as solid
as it used to appear.

Over here we have a chart
explaining how the System
self-regulates and does its work.

Over there we have a chart
explaining how the people
who run the System are in fact
part of another, Deeper System
underneath and behind the System.

Over there — a different there —
there’s a chart explaining
how the Systems one can see
are not the True Systems. How 
another Ultimate System entirely is running
and no other System exists at all
and we cannot know the Ultimate System
because, because…

And there we are, pointing
at our preferred charts, screaming
at the adherents of systems 
other than our own:

Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.
Jeffrey Epstein didn’t
kill himself. Jeffrey Epstein isn’t dead.
Jeffrey Epstein’s moldy body was used
to breed the coronavirus. 
It’s China. It’s Russia.
It must be reptilians. No,
that’s silly. it’s gotta be the Grays.
Follow the golden
showers, the money,
the long game.

Follow it all
at the same time, spinning
and pointing at charts
until you’re dizzy — 

all the while
someone’s picking your pockets
and chuckles while putting up
chart upon chart upon chart
for you to argue over.
Charts,
they tell themselves,
are our business, and business 
is good,
while all we ever say in return is,

which chart do we put them on?

Am not and will never be
a pleased citizen of a displeasing culture

where life has been tuned to enforced dissatisfaction
and to wanting so much more than is good for you

Where all cues are taken from the long-ago dead
and to freestyle beyond them is anathema-death

Am not and will never be traditional
in the sense of the word that means toe-the-line

where there are different lines for different people
and we are backed up snarling across them at others

Where we drown in the smarmy the snark and the witless
and stare at the sun till we burn out our TV-dulled eyes

Am not and will never be pure at my center
in this place where percentage and quota are God

If you are more of this more of that
Or less than required in all of your portions

they set you aside and remand you to hell
Where the fire’s burned out and you shiver to pieces

Am not and will never accept this as normal
Am not and will never lie down and sleep well

in this place that might have been something at one time
Maybe for ten minutes or maybe fifteen

a long time ago in the head of a child
who lay down and drifted through patriot dreams

then awoke in this place and once they could see it
have never had rest for a whole night since then

Dear America,

I can’t with you today
and I’m lucky I don’t have to.

You smell, for one thing. Like
sweat, fear, death mixed in.

It’s unpleasant. 
I shouldn’t have to

smell that just to call myself
a citizen. You cheat

at duck-duck-goose
and granted it’s usually in 

my favor but it’s still not easy for me
to see how you strike the geese

almost at random, almost. And
you’re so damn loud — louder

than electric blues these days,
louder than rock and roll — I knew

how to deal with loud
back in the day but this

new racket, I can’t hear
myself in there at all. It leaves me

a little bit upset.
I’m sorrowing a bit

over the way the night’s fallen
on you, on me. 

Dear America,

I can’t with you today
and lucky for me I can 

work from home and leave
the news off. I think it’s

terrible, how they show
these things and give people

ideas. I think
and I think, I really do, but

sometimes I’m in my feelings
and then I get lonely and reminisce

about how we used to be
together when you never

looked over my shoulder
to notice anyone else. How I long

for a return to your exclusive embrace,
America. How I yearn for

the sweet old smell of myself
on your collar,

the once-clean stripes
on our flag.

there are words that make a difference to people — say “violence,”
watch faces change as people open their thinking to “violence.”

some folks will see there a burning body and say, this is violence.
some folks will see there a court of justice and say, this is violence.

a brick falling from a facade into the street? some say, violence.
a brick falling from a facade into the street? some say, no violence.

there’s a blue knee on a black neck over there. that is violence.
blue knee on a black neck right here, though? law and order, not violence.

history red in a flag, holy red on sacred ground, memorial red in a poppy: our violence.
vile red in a word, terror red on a street corner, spilled red on a tossed-off shirt: their violence.

ceremonial planes built for war overhead in formation? call it a tribute, not violence.
war planes over a neighborhood? think first of profit, not violence.

did you imagine when this began that it would end in something other than violence?
you see in our beginning how it led us here to this smoke, these hands, this violence.