It’s not that America isn’t a great country,
I’d just rather be home.In my country, poverty is very real,
but here there is a greater suffering.
Home, I fill myself with poets,
storytellers, those with idealism.
Home, we give honor to the teacher.
Your country breeds a spiritual anger,
a poverty more devastating
than a lack of food, a lack of clean water.
Why can’t Americans wait patiently in line?
Where is it written a house needs a five-
car garage? A phone in every room?
A diamond to die for? A PlayStation 3
to fight over? I would rather own
a gem of verse, a storyteller’s laugh line,
knowledge from a teacher.
Those are things to die for. I have to go
home. The water is too shallow here.
| Copyright © 2021 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
I love how somehow our brains are working in similar worlds. I have been working on the immigrant viewpoint on a couple of solo projects. They must see us as ungrateful for all of the freedoms they seek. Very nice piece!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
ReplyDelete“Spiritual anger” – a phrase to awaken the mind of a budding psychologizing philosopher like Kierkegaard or Nietzsche. Oh, wherefore art thou? Are you Michael H. Brownstein or Michael E. Strosahl themselves? Is the contemporary psychologizing philosopher a poet like Rilke? Is he Bob Boldt or Eric Meub? Is he me?
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