I recommend reading this out loud for full effect
My country is a poem
A poem whose heart is raging
Not prose
A poem, we insisted
Not the medieval mumbling
Of the Old World
We proclaimed ourselves
Evolved beyond
Not only, insisted we,
Will we not go quietly into the night
There will be no night at all
But a bright and percussive morning
First in Democracy, we said
Last in despair
He who shunned crowns
Said to raise a standard
To which the wise and honest
Can repair
We have striven
To repair
Generations of repair
Never completing the task
But striving always
Etching new lines
More virtuous verses
Into our poem
A poem whose heart is raging
My country today
Gropes about the floor
Desperate nails,
Like eagle’s talons,
Search in our present dirt
To find its mirror
To remember itself
To call forth
Its most ardent angels
Against the demons in dominion
Merciless are these demons
Castled in corruption
Howlers of hate
Whores of hopelessness
Defilers of democracy
Demagogues of division
The oldest thing that ever lived
So old, so ancient,
It paints itself
Putrid orange
To hide its frailty
The New World is old again
Mumbling medieval
Callous as crowns
Congress shreds its sacred honor
Coward-crusted squatters
Wasting the People’s Seats
Step out your ivory offices
Funded with our sweat
Go you to cornfields
To city schools and country clinics
To veteran’s home and patient’s bed
To frightened factory and fearful farm
Go you to the Halls of our towns
Fear you our voice
Fear you our poem
A poem whose heart is raging
Cower, fascist dogs
Whimpering at oligarch’s feet
You hear our heart
You fear our poetry
Tremble do your bones
At the fear we’ll find our mirror
Brace your shattered nerves,
For We who see you clear as snakes
Lying naked on the Founding parchment,
Whether we saw you always
Or see you now
Or will see you tomorrow,
We never lost our mirror
Though it may have been held at our side
It is firmly in our grip
And I lift it now
In its glass
Is etched our poem
A poem whose heart is raging
The founding verse a Declaration
An overture of oppressive kings
Met with a symphony
Of Citizen might
Musket and ink
Turned not a page
But wrought a new book
Peasants most practical
Pursued happiness
And unimagined possibilities
An eagle with arrow and olive
Not perfect
But with honor
In its yearning eyes
A question
In our poem
A searching,
A Proclamation
Of its soul
When some attempted from within
To author our destruction
To hold hard to heinous inhumanity
Slave and free person stood
Stood
STOOD
Upon the promise
In our poem’s spirit
Written not between the lines
But awash over them
That we prize liberty
Of all men
In all lands
Everywhere
That ours is a poem for all people
All continents
All constellations
A poem whose heart is raging
Hitler’s soldiers sent
Wounded tanks back to factories
Our boys fixed ours in the battle field
And pressed them on
Nazi rot against
One American, a thousand times over, with a wrench
And a heart that raged with freedom
Such is our ingenuity
Such is our resourcefulness
Our resolve
Our Everyman
The giant that slept
Awoke with a roar
That echoed across the hemispheres:
Our country is a poem
Borrow it
Weave its verses among your own
So all the world may be a poem
A poem whose heart is raging
We said
To the Moon
And we made it so
We would be damned
If Big Brother Tyrant
Would plant its flag
Of oppression
On that celestial body
To defile her dust of daring
To make calamitous
Her Sea of Tranquility
Look heavenward, we cried
And see not tyranny but hope
Not hollow lies but pregnant promise
Fire hoses to the body,
Segregation to the soul
A dream in Greensboro
A dream in Selma
A dream in brave, non-violent hearts
They stood
Stood
STOOD
How many times must the people STAND
The courage of eons
Coursing through their veins
Demanding their seat
Demanding the full promise of our poem
A poem whose heart is raging
Stonewall
Hard labor fought
Birth Mother of my freedom
Suits and gowns and final straws
Queens with no subjects
Stood
STOOD
Taller
Prouder
Stronger
Than any emperor
Hate is heresy against the heart
Love wins all wars
And there is love
There is love aplenty in our poem
A poem whose heart is raging
We are Americans
We are builders and bridge-makers
We are philanthropists and farmers
We are soldiers and singers
We are doctors and dreamers
We are stormers of Normandy
Chain-breakers of Buchenwald
Explorers of moons
We are still, STILL, Berliners
And we are poets
Our country is a poem
A poem whose heart is raging
A poem who has not met its final verse
Stand
STAND
We will never stop standing
Hold the line
The line of liberty not guaranteed
We were told
It was our birthright
It is not
It is the birthright of all the world
We are merely its modern originators
We are its self-appointed sentinels
And we’ve been sleeping at our post
Our country is a poem
A poem whose heart is raging
And the redactor of poetry
Sits at the Resolute
Bring forth like an angered ocean
Our Founders’ most sacred legal promise:
Our even-yeared revolutions
26
28
30
Unending
But do not sleep
Do not lower sails
On the sea of hopelessness
Hopelessness is their weapon
Let it puncture you not a millimeter
Our country is a poem
A poem whose heart is raging
Let beat that mighty heart
Let thunder that passionate soul
Crumble all walls to dust
Feed all hearts
Hearts hungry
For freedom
Write more verses into our poem
Verses most virtuous
Verses unrivaled in history
Imagined only
Until we wrought them
Refute their mumbled medieval prose
As ancient as the cave-feuds of apes
Insist on the promise of our poem
A poem whose heart is raging
Throw out the shadows
Do not go quietly into the night
Declare there will be no night at all
But instead
Instead
A new
Bright
Percussive
Morning