AMERICKA
by Mike Best
Our presidents are felons, America.
I socked a kid in the head, 20 years ago
And now I’m unemployable nationwide.
I can work full time and still receive unemployment benefits.
I’ve been to school for 300 credit hours
And I’m still not highly qualified.
How about you Jeb, George, Barak?
Are you guys highly qualified?
Show me your transcripts. Give me an explanation.
I’ve given you my all and now I’m nothing.
Can I get your permission to kill my neighbor?
Whose permission did you get Dick?
Shit it was self-defense and I still did time.
My psychotherapist said I was right.
She even sold me a dimebag.
Kept me paranoid for days,
No happy hippy flowers, no mellow munchy buzz
Just fear of the fuzz and fear of my sins.
Fear of myself, when will I be cleansed of my sins by angels?
Say, America, when will you be angelic?
Your culture expects me to be some kind of sinister
Predator just to avoid being preyed upon.
You expect me to get a job but create rules that keep me
From getting hired. Without the right ratio of callous and
Reticence I’m gonna get fired. You can’t go
Into education and expect to help people. All you get
Is your head chopped off at the neck. I got a
Long neck, America. So I’m gonna
Stick my head in the sand because, America,
Quite frankly, I’m sick of your insane demands.
My age old Friend Kenny stuck
His arm in a machine, America,
And his coworker turned it on for kicks.
Tore his arm off – doctors put it back
On – And got rich.
So did Kenny. But now his beloved American
Ex-Wife wants it all for herself – that’s your lifestyle,
America – that’s the American Dream.
That’s the values you hold, get rich quick and easy.
But I won’t have it – your machinery is too much for me.
It’s left me like Willie Loman.
Dreaming big wispy dreams of a
Life less low man. I have five
Minute schemes, - sell the car and buy a ticket out
Picture me in Vietnam with the mud
Between my toes. Picture me in a
Suit and tie with a roll in my pocket
As big as that 10 year old crack dealer’s.
But it won’t be here America, not in this nation.
I promise you, I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
Ginsberg’s not the only one with
Sentimental feelings for the Wobblies. Not
The only one who smokes marijuana
Every chance he gets. Only I got a
Family to feed, America.
Even with a weed licensee and
Chemo - I could still lose my job - if only I
Had one. Catch me with a roach
And I haven’t a Chinaman’s chance
Of getting a way to get paid. Which is why
Whenever I go to Chinatown I can’t get drunk or laid
You allow criminals to make the laws, America.
You pay them so well, America.
I never wanted to be rich but the only
Alternative is dirt poor. You bail
Out the big ballers and blast the
Middle right off the court, America.
I don’t mind dirty rivers.
I don’t care about an endangered rat’s rights.
If the meat is cheap
I’ll eat it off the bone, barbecued and fricasseed.
Because it’s you America, not Russia rising against me
I’ve seen how the other half live.
It’s no better than here.
They’re locked in jobs while I’m locked out.
They kill themselves over college. I’ll do it because
I stole a pair of goggles at eighteen. Larceny.
What a scary word! Don’t let me
Near a public school I might steal a pencil – I’ve done
It before, I swear! For real!
I did it because I’m psychopathetic anyways.
I think it because when I was seven momma took me to communist cell meetings.
America, how can I write when even
The blogs won’t print me?
If I wanna be a writer I’m supposed to have balls
But if I wanna be a teacher I gotta clip them off
And keep my mouth shut at all times.
America, is this correct?
America, you make me have to be a saint.
Or a woman, or anything but an educated white male, America
Those damn Nazi rednecks were right
About it!
It’s all in the statistics, America.
There is no way to settle the argument.
It’s cannibalization – eat or be eaten.
No symbiosis. No shit turned fertilizer.
It’s all about the plague, America.
Cholera, kudzu, Siberian ginseng, zebra clams,
Mosquitoes, angry white feminazis,
America. Fruits of Islam love to see
Me squirm. Holy rollers multiply and play
The population game – and I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer!
God is man and woman ripping one another
To shreds, America – you’re god, America.
God is them Russians and Chinamen.
God is fucking and its fucking obscene.
Don’t let your children hear the word nigger America. Change the spelling or
Something for God’s sake, say it
Backwards – it sounds like your favorite president that way
Fuck it I’m God, America.
And as an unemployed untouchable it
Occurs to me that I’m America.
Do they need old English majors in the Air Force?
Can a writer turn lathes into precision parts?
It’s true – I don’t want to.
I’d just as soon help Indians learn to read.
I’d just as soon sell my opinions.
Penny for my thought. Pick it up and find good luck.
Make me work 16 hour days. I done it before.
Send me to Tangiers with Burroughs.
The ultra-conservative queer – and I don’t give a shit if
You are queer America so long as you give me a job.
I want to put my own queer shoulder to the wheel, America.
Mike Best is an unemployed American writer, world traveler and teacher who is currently attempting to escape the United States as quickly as possible. He doesn't feel welcome in the United States nor anywhere else, but prefers being unwelcomed somewhere else. He's written for several online magazines and enjoyed a brief moment of fame in Asia, before making the mistake of returning to the United States. The End.
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