This poem was written by Jared Harriss -- copyright 2001 -- All rights are reserved, so please ask permission before copying or taking for your personal use --

The America That Means Something

I write this to
you America:
with all your colors.
your reds whites and blues.
you and your literature
spread to countries
half of us can't find
on maps with directions
written like stereo
instructions scrawled in
a doctors penmanship
telling us
who gives a shit!

I write this to America:
whose children sing of courage and freedom
every morning at 7:15 a.m.
religiously. they are marched
down hall after hall
searching for flags w/stars
and stripes and familiar
colors
-- or else!

I write this to my
America:
For whom I've never
heard a bell toll
--but have heard horns
honking radios blared
and children screaming
for.

But America I have seen
things for you
on my journeys home on
public transportation
reading signs on
roadsides out of tinted
Plexiglas
paranoid that it
will rain rocks and
Plexiglas well prove itself.
I have heard mothers
crying around their children
lying dead from stray
bullets lingering like
fragrance in the streets
and have read your name on every beer
bottle busted and on every
neo light on Baltimore St.
I have heard
whores say your name
during pillow talk
and after sex talk
they knew your name
but not mine
--your name must mean something!


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