This is not America

This is not America

But is it less?

If it were Armenia

Or New Zealand

Would it be any more?

Are they all

Just another country

With a quieter voice.

Do you over there

In the starry, stripey

Tee shirt

With the big, supersized outlook

And money belt

Love your country anymore

Or any less

Than they do in Kazakhstan?

I know you can’t find it

On a map

God love you

But

God might love it just as much.

It is not beyond the bounds

Of possibility

Or probability

That god does not exist

Having said that

Am I a pagan

An infidel

An agnostic fatalist

An immoral propagandist

Who should know his place

Is to be an outcast

Ejected from the circle

Of love

Unconnected

Undocumented

Excommunicated

Objectified

My stereotypical

Construct reified

My humanity revoked.

Were we not all

Welcome

When the world was smaller?

Henry the Fifth

Called for the invention

Of the passport.

(Yes, I know it was mentioned

In the Bible

In passing.)

“Oh, we few

We happy few

We happy band of brothers”

Not so welcome now

At the king's table

Or anywhere else

If you ask me.

But look at that

Another Shakespeare quote

Stolen to suit the taste

Of Hollywood’s war machine

In all its glory

The best and worst of it

Repackaged

As original.

There is nothing new

In misappropriation

It has a long, ignoble history

God only knows

What it has to do

With patriotism

When it all boils down

To the same amount

Of fatty acid,

And the indigestible fact

We are all birthed

As human traffic now.