Bad Poem

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we have no furnaces in America to separate ideals
from realitiy
we heat houses, bake pizzas, fire pots with brick ovens
annoyed when reminders of American atrocity
befoul pages we have written songs memorized
honest citizens call representatives to say
people have been disappeared
los deseparecidos nuevos-the new gone missing
we are not a group ending in -ism until today
you declaim "we are good"
what is a black prison? Where are they, Grandma
she looks to mother and wonders who knows
and who or what is right
we have no genocide ovens as evidence
we have stories and remains
about who slaughtered whom
about where and why too easy to see
we're not the good guys any more than
you are terror and lies as
bad as any history-you can see the stories
staged about greatness, our freedoms
show no habeus corpus
forgotten and lost our
potential traded with bad gods
never minding stupid error
most Americans like most anywhere
remain silent, don't even vote
We have raped our dream of democracy
and taken the cream, the fat of the land
It's time to outlaw the same old same old
story.