07.13.2018
Weekly poem on Trump Presidency
Bob Hicok
Rough draft of a national anthem
to be sung to the tune of "Under Pressure"
to anyone who presses their face
against the glass of America
The blood in my veins
is pure accident,
making me the same
as every other vagabond
surprised that their heart
fits their chest.
I've often felt lucky
I'm a mutt
born in a country
filled with mutts,
that I never had to pack
the little sun and dust I own,
put them on my back
and walk toward the idea
that everyone is equal
as measured by the privilege
of breath
while hoping that no one
has shot that idea in the head.
A door to be a door
has to open and a hand
to be more
than a five-petaled flower
has to hold a spoon
to eat soup or another hand
to help someone off the ground.
Welcome.
I've been waiting for your fight to be at ease
to join my struggle to find purpose and a way
to extract the giddiness of being drunk
and apply it to the drudgery of all the Tuesdays
I have to go, your limp and mine should go steady
as the American ideal of making it on our own
together, and if you're asking me what I learned
in civics, it's share or our mothers will send us to bed
without freedom, so what can I tell you
about America: it wants you, even
when it doesn't remember how badly it does.
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Bob Hicok's ninth book, Hold, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in the fall of 2018. "Why can't we give love give love give love give love give love give love give love give love give love."
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