Hoagland's America
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Poetry
America
by Tony Hoagland 2003

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison

Whose walls are made of Radio Shacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,

And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,
He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu

Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

Buried alive, captured, and suffocated in the folds
Of the thick satin quilt of America

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
Or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,

And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,
It was not blood but money

That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part,—

He gasped, “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were
Clogging up my heart—

And so I perish happily,
Freed from that which kept me from my liberty”—

Which is when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
Would never speak in rhymed couplets,

And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes
And I think, “I am asleep in America too,

And I don’t know how to wake myself either,”
And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

“I was listening to the cries of the past,
When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.”

But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
Or what kind of nightmare it might be

When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you
And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand
Which turns the volume higher?

Bumper Stickers
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Anti-Bush
*AT LEAST IN VIETNAM,
BUSH HAD AN EXIT STRATEGY

*BLIND FAITH IN BAD LEADERSHIP IS NOT PATRIOTISM

*IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED,
YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION

*IF YOU SUPPORTED BUSH,
A YELLOW RIBBON WON'T MAKE UP FOR IT

*POVERTY, HEALTHCARE & HOMELESSNESS ARE MORAL ISSUES

*OF COURSE IT HURTS.
YOU'RE GETTING SCREWED BY AN ELEPHANT

*BUSH LIED,
AND YOU KNOW IT

*RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM:
A THREAT ABROAD, A THREAT AT HOME

*GOD BLESS EVERYONE
(No exceptions)

*BUSH SPENT YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY ON HIS WAR

*PRO AMERICA,
ANTI BUSH

*WHO WOULD JESUS BOMB?

*IF YOU SUPPORT BUSH'S WAR,
WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?
SHUT UP AND SHIP OUT

*FEEL SAFER NOW?

*I'D RATHER HAVE A PRESIDENT WHO SCREWED HIS INTERN
THAN ONE WHO SCREWED HIS COUNTRY

*JESUS WAS A SOCIAL ACTIVIST - THAT IS A LIBERAL

*MY VALUES? FREE SPEECH. EQUALITY.
LIBERTY. EDUCATION. TOLERANCE

*IS IT 2008 YET?

*DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTISM
-- Thomas Jefferson

*DON'T BLAME ME.
I VOTED AGAINST BUSH -- TWICE!

*ANNOY A CONSERVATIVE;
THINK FOR YOURSELF

*VISUALIZE
IMPEACHMENT

*HEY BUSH!
WHERE'S BIN LADEN?

*CORPORATE MEDIA = MASS MIND CONTROL

*STOP MAD COWBOY DISEASE

*GEORGE W. BUSH:
MAKING TERRORISTS FASTER THAN HE CAN KILL THEM

*KEEP YOUR THEOCRACY
OFF MY DEMOCRACY

*DEMOCRATS ARE SEXY.
WHOEVER HEARD OF A GOOD PIECE OF ELEPHANT?

*CORPORATE MEDIA:
WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION

*DON'T CONFUSE DYING FOR OIL
WITH FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM

*HATE, GREED, IGNORANCE:
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

*HONOR OUR TROOPS;
DEMAND THE TRUTH

*REBUILD IRAQ?
WHY NOT SPEND 87 BILLION ON AMERICA?

*FACT: BUSH OIL
1999 - $19 BARREL
2006 - $70 BARREL

*THE LAST TIME RELIGION CONTROLLED POLITICS,
PEOPLE GOT BURNED AT THE STAKE

*SUPPORT OUR TROOPS;
IMPEACH BUSH

*HOW ON EARTH CAN 59,411,287
PEOPLE BE SO DUMB?

Mexican Immigrants
Mood:  loud
Topic: Amnesty
In the past, every heavy immigration to the USA felt like a huge threat to our culture and our preferred language, English, but we have always "recovered" from each one and adopted words from each of "their" languages and called them our own. Other cultures enrich ours, and what we call American is actually mixture of all those cultures. We were proud for a while to call ourselves the melting pot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States

During the potato famine in Ireland, the "Micks" as they were called came here in the droves. They settled in New York and Boston. Without them, we wouldn't have had the Kennedys in Boston and the proud police and firemen of New York. The Norwegians and Swedes settled in Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, and Minnesota. Without them, we wouldn't have the wonderful cheeses and yogurt and the area called the Nation's Breadbasket. Few other immigrants would have seen the potential of such barren prairies and soggy wetlands. The Chinese were lured to the United States to work in mines and the railroads, to do the work that no one else wanted to do. At the turn of the 20th Century, the Chicago meatpackers employed thousands of men and women and children from Eastern European countries by luring them here with promises of great jobs, cottages with white picket fences, and schools for their children. See this website for more:

http://www.encyclopedia.Chicagohistory.org/pages/757.html

Almost every one of these mass immigrations have had one thing in common: The owners of large companies, Andrew Carnegie, the Rockefellers, Vanderbilt and Ford lured these immigrants to this country so they could exploit their lack of knowledge of our laws and the English language to overwork and underpay them. Read about the Robber Barons:

http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/Lesson_44_Notes.htm

This is what has happened again in our time. Over the past twenty years, the arrest and prosecution of employers for luring and hiring Mexicans has become so lax that big owners of companies have become brazen in breaking the law. The real lawbreakers are the business owners. Blame them.

So, now we come to the reality of what we as Americans have allowed to pass once more, a great influx of people from another country to serve our decadent, fat ass society with cheap labor. We are to blame. We must own up to our mistake, just like we did when we enslaved millions of black Africans and then "freed" them into a society that no longer wanted their labor at a fair price. As long as these Mexicans were working out of sight in menial jobs, no one was complaining much, but the employers have become more and more brazen and have crowded out American citizens from jobs that once paid very good wages. The law looked the other way as long as we could buy cheaply at Wal-Mart and fill our grocery carts with out of season fruits and vegetables

The right thing to do is what we have always done in the past with those immigrants who have shown they love this country more than their own safety: We allow them to become citizens of the country they love so much, that they have helped to build and thrive. We owe them that chance.
-Carol

Empty nest again
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: MSNBC
Topic: Empty nest
Here I am experiencing the Empty Nest Syndrome (again), now that Melinda has moved to Texas, and I am without her company. But I have conquered the feelings brought about by this kind of situation two times before and to a lesser degree each time she visited me during Christmas and summer vacations while she was in college. And to this time in my life I offer a few words in poetic form.

"The Empty Nest" by Carol Armbrust Oct. 3, 2005

---

The empty nest has lots of space in it,
areas to amble to and fro in it,
quiet nights to toss and turn in it,
more food in the refrigerator...
than one can ever eat in it,
cleaner carpets, countertops and tables in it,
unlocked bathrooms and bedroom doors in it,
and less dirty laundry, or mounds of towels in it.

All good things these are, but
what kind of world would we wish...
where all things are perfectly dished?

Give me no place to sit and an empty icebox,
stumbles in the dark over piles of shoes and socks,
an agonizing wait at the bathroom door,
hours of dirty dishes and laundry galore,
and a spare bed for a peaceful night's rest,
and I'll show you a happily-filled once-empty nest.