The US is a great country—
Everyone else better watch out!²
US global policy can be defined simply:
Permanent Counter-Revolution.³
From sea to shining
Hell rising up!⁴
I walk the States with
A barb’d tongue—Questioning—⁵
For revolting Barbarity and shameless
Hypocrisy—the US reigns without rival.⁶
America it is to thee thou boasted land of
Liberty—it is to thee we raise our song
Thou land of Blood, Crime and Wrong!⁷
The US will always be the
Mortal Enemy of all races—⁸
May Indigestion upset the feast,
The stomach that gorges on cheap oil,
Blood, and belief in false history—⁹
How much will the CIA Pay
For the head of a Poet?¹⁰
¹ Langston Hughes, I, Too
² Tina Brown Celona, The Big Day
³ Tariq Ali, The Dilemmas of Lenin
⁴ Ed Roberson, Noise Complaint
⁵ Walt Whitman, By Blue Ontario’s Shores
⁶ Frederick Douglass, The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro
⁷ John Monroe Whitfield, America
⁸ María Ruiz de Burton tr. original, Letter to Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo
⁹ Laura Hershey, Ill at Ease
¹⁰ Heberto Padilla tr. original, Nuclear Umbrella