The America I Remember.

The America I remember has been stolen,

it doesn’t seem to be the way

it was when I first laid

eyes on the French mistress

holding a light to the world’s

repossessed and charmed poetry fanatic.

The bars look uncomfortable now

and not welcoming to the stranger

at the door, clad in clothes

of home but willing to

change, to leave the will behind

and play the game, until it suits

to change the rules, one message at a time.

 

The America I loved, still love, for passion

never truly leaves the veins once infected,

seems to have forgotten what made it

make me love it, tales of a world beyond a world,

where open skies were filled with wonder

and the dense fog of European stillness

long since discarded with a smile

and a large bourbon whisky

in a 77th Street booth;

the young woman behind the bar I never realised

loving me enough to send me home.

 

The America I know has been stolen,

pumped full of adrenaline and bile

as it searches for an uncertain identity,

as it hunts for the money to pay

the ransom, unaware that payment

is too itself, secure bondage,

liberation not on the agenda

for those whose masks

have slipped…

not in the America I once knew.

 

Ian D. Hall 2016