America

I see you, America,
riding the brine like a
dishevelled coat

flung from grinning boats of
grand men with shining pasts
and terrible futures.

I see you, America,
a tangled kite higher than your
rippling stars,

drunk on squealing avatars,
tearing plants from shrieking jungles
to dump in your cola,

like Dorothy’s house on the wicked
clever witches of the East.

I see you, America,
throwing up your 100-year feast,
a genie in heels, shouting
‘how bout dem feels?’

jetting from the lamp you’ve rubbed raw
with every wish you’ve granted Yourself
in the sniper towers of your glittering Oz.

I see you America,
eyes rolled up the halfpipe of your
whirring skull as you mainline debt through
tricolour veins, stroking the steel long fled
from your eyes.

You’re an imploding star on a Segway,
America,
a latticework of pawn shops,
failed orange wizards and
Mustangs roaring bright
in ripe spears of sun.

I see you now, gobbling up the sky,
like the furies that stalk your fat gold spine,
splintering barns while TVs shout divine
through empty houses, the glories of
Kardashians, Meds and Oil.

Your windows are broken
America,
but when I look through them
I see that such things can
still be beautiful.