Virgil

I posted in my last blog Walt Whitman's poem "I Hear America Singing" and prendrelemick asked if such an America existed. Yes it did but he inspired me to write a parody poem of the new America as it exists today. Mind you this is a parody. While a certain bitterness I've been feeling with the state of my country lately spills over here, this is not a complete picture of what the country is like and it does not reflect what I truly feel. I am not this cynical. But hope you get a kick out of it.

I Sing of a New America

I sing of hamburger flippers and French fry frizzlers, grease sizzling on the grill.

I sing of computer programmers and internet bloggers.

I hear the songs of fitness trainers and dieticians who try to reduce the belly bulge of all those overweight Americans who feast of greasy burghers and fat fries.

The journalists sing as they make up the news, sitting at their desks clicking at their keyboards, getting carpel tunnel syndrome and feeling sorry for themselves.

The computer geeks sing as they design the next cell phones, the latest laptops, new interactive computer games since the virtual is so much more enticing than reality.

I sing of wind mill electro-mechanics and solar panel technicians since all the other technologies have gone over seas.

I sing of plastic surgeons fixing faces and implanting silicone inside the breasts of flat-chested women.

I sing of cashiers and retailers selling all those Chinese imports in our lovely malls.

The janitors sing while they sweep and mop our malls, the chain stores, the lobbies of hotels, the toilet rooms of gas stations, blood off the floors of abortion mills.

I hear songs of America’s lawyers lying, springing criminals and prosecuting the innocent.

The teachers sing of teaching Chinese so we can understand the instructions on all our imports.

The abortionist sings as he pulls apart the little child limb from limb inside the most dangerous place a child can be, the womb.

I sing of bankers who don’t pay interest and don’t lend money, who wear their nine hundred dollar suits and send money to offshore countries to avoid our exuberant tax rates.

The stock brokers sing as they trade on the market floors, investing in multinational companies, wondering if the US economy is ever going to rise again.

The baseball players sing of swatting hardballs, football players of bone breaking tackles, basketball players stuffing nets, each singing of all their overpriced salaries that sit in bank accounts that don’t earn any interest.

I sing of the condom makers and the songs of those that distribute all those condoms for free to all our school children, because education isn’t important but sex is.

I sing of all those government bureaucrats who are now in control of every aspect of our lives, who take at least half our earnings and tell us what we should spend the other half on, deciding which medical procedures are warranted and who’s too old to live.

The tattoo artists sing as they paint body parts with green and red ink, piercing noses and nipples, hair stylists as they coiffure heads to look like animal locks, because it’s better to look like a freak than to look real.

I hear the songs of grease ball rock stars who sing songs of sluts and sex and drugs, because if you can’t live in virtual reality you need to dim down the bright light of life.

The Hollywood actors sing of their sex filled movies that motivate the country to look and act with plastic style, walk in eight inch heels, wear fiberglass clothes, and drive sporty little cars made on the other side of the world.

I sing of all the prostitutes and lap dancers at the strip clubs, the pornographers who show us the latest sex moves, the masseurs who offer happy endings to your massage, and all the other sex workers who go by some clandestine wink.

I hear songs of America’s new economic model, movies and songs that make you want to fornicate, pornographers that show you how to fornicate, hook-up ads that bring people together to fornicate, when of course you’re bored with self fornicating, free birth control for cheap fornications, and nearby abortionists when you screw up the birth control that had the instructions in Chinese.

Each returning back to the soothing songs of movies and sports and virtual reality to make you feel oh so jolly again.


Actually as I look back on this I think I was channeling the beat poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti more so than Walt Whitman.