Birds don’t sing
for freedom they already have.

Birds sing
for what they desire.

Imprison someone long enough
and they will learn to sing.

Prisoners who can hear birds
will offer cage songs in response.

Any prisoner who learns
how to sing cage songs

will eventually learn
how to make them beautiful.

The warden wants to keep them
from being free.

They will take
the cage songs from the singers,

sell them to the world,
call them freedom songs.

All those freedom songs began
as cage songs rising

in the throats of those
who have been locked down.

Listen to them, the warden says.
Listen to them singing like birds.

The warden might be telling the truth
but you would have to ask a prisoner

to be certain, and no one
wants that to happen. After all

your own chains
might be at risk.

You might feel
a powerful need to sing.

Most mornings —
hell, every morning —

are for staring straight up
at those dots
stuck like pinholes
into the clouds, dots
growing larger against
the once-blessed sky.

Waiting all day
and long into the night,
shielding ourselves from
them —

all those shoes
dropping.

That was never a border
until Someone made it one
in your name whether you cared
or not. Once it was there
you were expected to agree
with it and with all that it took
to keep it a border, from a wall
to a law. You were expected to be
fine with how those coming this way
were kept out, no matter how badly
the starved or sickened or died of thirst
or bullets. You were expected to forget
about their children and those cages and
those tinfoil blankets and how illness took them
and takes them and how Someone
takes them and trades them out
to terror homes and no one will find them
but they get to stay here since they’ve vanished
already and for Someone that counts as compassion
even as they call bottles of water left for future crossers
on this side of that made-up line
a form of treason. You are expected to forget
all Someone did there in favor of new outrages
upon which to focus your outlaw compassion —
but, do not forget. Do not forget that
Someone started there and
what you see there will be done over and over
here there and everywhere until you are unable
to focus and you surrender just as Someone
is waiting for you to do.

Not again:

obvious lie,
the words alone
a weak response
to the moment.

Of course it’s about
to happen again.

I am tired 
of saying it.

I’ve been so tied
to repeating those words
for so long
that my hand
has gone dead
for much beyond 
cutting sad food and 
trembling.

Any magic
that would work now
will have to move 
beyond chanting.

Silver bullets.
Sacred daggers.

An army raised
in the land of
vengeful dead.

out in the streets —
massed like bristles
in a new broom

an urgent cleansing
in progress —
shaking off dust

chanting —
sound of layers of filth
beginning to shift

what was built from dirt
cannot stand —
new broom wrecking all

Tune in twenty-four
seven for the melody
of the moment. Explosions

and big deaths,
laws broken and hard weather
all get sung the same.

The newsreaders sing
the cadence of sport, sing
like play by play reporters.

They throw it to the sidelines 
where generically handsome people
add touches of color to

their black and white
depictions of struggle
made simple and easy to

swallow. Every
story reduced
to winning and losing,

even if all there is
is loss. There is rarely
any story where

all are winning. That’s
not American enough.
Can’t be number one

without there being
a number two. They sing
that song in spite of

the fire behind them:
lullaby, fight song
for the last quarter.

Enough to make you turn it off
and go wail in a corner
waiting for silence to take over

and make you forget.
Make you want to stop caring
for any of it. Almost

as if 
that was the plan from
the starting gun.

I wear the name
“American”
by default only.

It’s not a name
that feels like
a good fit, but in truth

that ill-fit feeling
is as American
an experience

as feeling snug and comfy
when you put the name on.
In fact

the entirety
of American experience
is the history of 

the party of the Snug and Comfy
telling the party of
the Ill-Fitting Name

that one name
fits everyone when in truth
the party of the first part

is only snug and comfy
because the party of the second part
has been made uncomfortable,

and of the discomforted
striving to make the name
fit them as well

when in truth
it wasn’t made
to do that.

I call myself
American 
by default

but I keep trying
for a better fit and 
I see all my fellow

uncomfortable
Americans pushing 
the seams and taking in

the loose fabric
because it’s either do this,
keep living lives of noisy

desperation, or
die of exposure — but  
since that’s what 

the snug and comfy live for,
I swear by the bodies
of all who went before and

will come after, as well as
those here now,
that whatever it takes

to make it so, 
they cannot win and this suit
is going to fit.

it looks into
the eyes of its beloved
demigoddess 
and explains itself thus

look
my darling liberty
we have
repaired our  
repulsive pancakes 
and disturbing butter
we are busy renaming
our war gamers

isn’t that enough
at least for a good start
I mean 
we still have to preserve 
our borders 
while opening our factories
and how will we live without
circuses to go
with our sad breads
our white breads and 
flatbreads
our wheat breads and
trend-sponsored 
sourdoughs

right now we’re a little
under the weather
so we’ve told everyone
to wear a mask
to protect everyone except
those we are used
to killing and who 
cares about them so
mandatory takes on 
a new meaning
for us
as in suggested
as in contemptible
but why not try it

anything more than that
will cost us plenty and make us
different 

so
with all
deliberate speed we will
dig into our thick authentic
red label
blue jean pockets
for small change
and spend it 
on small change

liberty
you sweet old girl

take off your blindfold 
and see me
I’m making an effort
put down the scales
and hold me
I’m cold

if you read the papers
they will tell you something else
but if you know the history

you will know we’re still
your darling
your favorite 
your same old used to be

Three words —
BLACK LIVES MATTER —
printed on a banner,
painted on a street,

and you saw fit
to tear it up, light it up,
spill paint on it,
burn rubber on it.

I want to seize you, 
drag the sneer off your face,
and ask you to explain
which of those three words

hurt you the most, 
tore you up so much 
that you had to do 
what you did.

I suspect you
will be puzzled 
and unable to answer
whether it was the word

BLACK because it isn’t
about you, LIVES 
because, after all,
it’s not like your own

feels much like a life, 
or MATTER because,
of course, in your eyes
they don’t. Maybe you

can’t tell me which one word
but you can say
you are insulted or
disturbed to think of

someone daring to say
the phrase as if it was
a truth held to be self-
evident when it

isn’t and wasn’t ever
supposed to be and now
that it’s out there you might 
have to behave.  Whatever.

The point is,
they do — and now
that I have you here,
sneer boy, cocky lump

of plain dumb, 
big old red hatted 
cracked rung on the
evolutionary ladder —

now that I have you,
I’m going to turn you out
onto the places where you thought
you were safe from having

to consider your actions
and see how you fare
walking down the street,
wondering who hates you,

who might want more of you
than I took from you, who might turn
the other cheek if you act up
again, and who might not.

Welcome to a cracked door, 
buddy. Welcome to a door
slowly opening, welcome to learning
about all that’s been locked away

so that you could
sneer in comfort.
Welcome to the place
of your definitions,

where all the words
you can’t stand to hear
will either change you
or drown you out.

He lives four doors down
from you.

She rides the elevator daily
with you.

They went to high school
with you.

On her wall in the FaceTime background,
a suspect flag designed to scare you. 

On his truck, a bumper sticker
for someone who hates you.

In the conversation you left, stifled laughter
about some joke aimed at those like you.

But they’re so damned nice
to you.

She now and then has lunch
with you.

He had pizza one day and held a slice out
to you.

You know why they role play cordiality
to you.

You don’t like to think about how it plays
you.

You try not to think about how they’re shrinking
you.

They prefer that smaller, quieter, less present
you.

It makes it easier to demand more and expect less
of you.

One day they’re going to look at 
you 

and see 
you

and scratch their heads and reimagine
you.

Beware that day when they finally see 
you

because on that day — yes — what could happen to
you:

you being you at full height and strength; could be curtains
for you

or them, or they’ll change and see you
for you;

not an excuse not
to be you —

if anything, it’s a bell ringing
for you,

an alarm 
for you:

they are who they are no matter how nice and you
are you.

Learn them for who they are
and then do you,

do you, do
you.