Boy Scout Shota[/caption]
WHAT IS AMERICA
What is America?
It isn't an easy answer
As it was with the Pledge of Allegiance
Said with a hand over my heart
In a two-room schoolhouse in Maine
Said in unison with other white students
We had learned in a young heart
Within a week
Without out any explanation
1958
America
It was a flag.
The State of Maine was one of the States
On the northern border of America
1960 my family moved to the South Shore of Boston.
Deeper into America
I attended a Catholic School
Sister Mary Magdalene taught us geography.
I memorized the states and the capitols.
Sister Mary Magdalene awarded me a gold star.
I learned more about America.
My uncles had fought wars.
Against the Nazis
Against the Japs
Against the North Koreans and Commie Chinese Reds
American stood for freedom
Superman stood for truth, justice and the American Way.
Talking in class was not allowed in parochial school Not by the students.
Opening your mouth earned a trip to Mother Superior's office
A wooden ruler on the palm
Ten times on the knuckles for bad boys.
Freedom was a word taught by the nuns
Under the Blue Hills
Boy Scouts
Memorial Day parades
Veterans of the wars.
America was in South Vietnam.
Older teens fought the Viet Cong.
For freedom.
At school
History
Geography
It was the Sixties
Some things did not make sense
A war in Asia. Siccing dogs on blacks. God. None of what they taught in school.and the men from our neighborhood Only math seemed the truth.and the men from our neighborhood I was a youth on a rampage,
Rock and roll, Louie Louie, Janet Stetson, The Velvet Underground, gas 35 cents a gallon.
July 4, 1968
The Quincy Quarries
Brewster's
A 110-foot granite cliff
Jimmie Lianetti dives off the Rail He is the coolest of the cool
Something goes wrong.
Our idol breaks his back
His friends drag him from the water
Not dead but never again him
I finish high school.
My draft number is 91
Soldiers and civilians die in Vietnam.
If I don't go to college
I could be one of them.
I want to leave my town
Boston
America I'm a fighter
Not a baby killer.
I go back to school
To learn more about America
Math major
That summer
Linda Imhoff.
An elegant junior exec at my father's office
Long legs, aristocratic accent, clean shaven body,
We fuck at the Hatchshell by the Charles River
Emerson Lake and Palmer onstage
We were in the bushes.
Gas 38 cents a gallon
The 1970s were not kind to America
The city closed the Quincy Quarries
In the 90s
Boston buried them in the rubble from the Big Dig
All to save suburban commuters fifteen minutes
The tunnel saved them nothing
It wasn't all gone
The concerts, the fights after school, the racism, the bullying, the murders, guns, the them against the other them.
I was a hippie,
I am a punk
I am a father
I am a grandfather.
I am nothing
I am everything.
I am an American
I know what it means to me
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
And that's it.
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