what does it mean to be an american?
What does it mean to be an american,
can you really be anything
if you haven’t struggled for, with, and against it?
Can you claim to be the same while ignoring where you depart,
‘it’s a start’, some may say,
because ignoring what is disparate,
is the American Way.
What does it mean to be a patriot
“it means believing the same as us,
where dust is love and blood is rust.
and dissension is dangerous.
It isn’t just the red, white, and blue
it is also the tiny little pieces of you
the star and striped shaped scars on the soul
they take their toll.
Then, to be an american is to suffer Pax Americana,
or as some call it, ‘Nirvana’,
that place in your mind
we all suffer in kind,
and cleanse the star shaped scars of our soul.
What does it mean to be a daughter of liberty,
if all we have known is liberty,
if we have never struggled at the chains to be free
or have we?
Are we free..
if what is free becomes the same to you and me?
And that becomes the measure of all we can see.
And maybe i’ll forget the most disparate parts of me,
but some i cant forget, and for a while i may never be free.
Our unique thoughts become tiny revolutionaries
fighting against inescapable irony -
that what makes us unique is also what makes us the same,
and in the same, what makes us alike
drives us apart, for a start,
because we all need to be free.
So what does it mean to be an american?
I think therefore i am, an american?
Or can i just be born, that is the norm,
after-all.
Before the fall, we fought for, with, and against,
the gilded and omniscient.
It’s all the same to me,
after-all,
i’m still learning how to be free.
I once met a man,
who swore i could never be an american
“you’re still in love with a foreign land,
you’ll do everything you can
to undermine us”
And i’m sure i have forgotten
where it says in the constitution,
‘only the least traveled among us
can claim to be one of us’,
but i digress,
it’s useless arguing with a man
who doesn’t struggle with who he is.
When one arrives too easily,
it deprives them of the economy
of learning things the hard way.
‘What about the girl’
i say
”who came to hers’ practically,
who, under duress,
reached her understanding
admirably, through thought and redress?
Isnt struggle the best?
To slay the dragoness?
The doubt that haunts our deepest recess.
The hole in our soul,
shaped like stars and stripes,
where debate is ripe
and meaningful,
and thoughts runneth over,
and our hearts are full?
And what of you?
What of your heart?
Is your head full of irony
and contradiction and
pious fictions? have you fought
the beast they call doubt and lost your innocence in the bout,
to boot?
Only then, sir, can you be sure,
your heart is pure and your soul at rest.”
‘Do i pass the test?’
‘what test?’
the man will say,
much to my dismay
‘you’re patriotism is a virtue of your circumstance,
not your ignominance!’
‘Perchance, sir, circumstances can change,
or maybe, you’ll always be the same,
but i can change, and change is noble
it’s a sign of elegance, and grace under fire.
And before i retire,
when all i have left is answers
and the questions unknown,
that i struggled to aspire
to what you call circumstance,
i call it arrogance,
and it is cheapened by your ignorance.
That in this giant world
1 in ten are Americans
and by that virtue so are you
and yet you have done nothing quite as bold
as lose your ignorance and your soul
by claiming what is yours by circumstance,
and circumstance alone.