My Country, ‘Tis of Thee

He wished he had punched somebody’s lights out
when he was young. He’d have been arrested, sure,
but then emerged with formidable clout.
He would have won a judicial sinecure
involving rehabilitation drills,
analysis, and liberal concerns
set forth toward developing social skills.
And society admires deft returns
on troubled kids, especially from those
who show combative fortitude enough
to have the pluck to bloody someone’s nose.
We love street toughs who won’t suffer any guff
from fractious souls who’d take us for a ride,
and start the trek into a downward slide.

But when it’s coming from the other side
of strongarm ideology, it’s then
we’re pissed. Alas, a Mama’s boy, astride
a host of social problems that would pen
him in his parents’ domicile, he groaned
negotiating how to be a man.
More Bach and Liszt than fist, he’d end dethroned,
less notably than the Shah of Iran,
without the well-heeled autocrat’s repute.
I guess you’d call him then, a realist,
compelled to cede his status in dispute
by people he might deem antagonists.
But in the end, there was no referee
negotiating what each side would claim.
As such, he’d wander as a refugee
with a stigmata added to his name.
Yet, one with street tough tactics stands a chance
of ending in a Hollywood romance.

with a little luck. They love a tough guy.
But if you cede someone your rightful place,
instead of fighting for it, you’ll belie
yourself morally and incur disgrace.
For history’s inscribed by those in charge,
Thus, in the city where he had his roots,
the score of his iniquities grew large
enough to cast a pall on his pursuits.
Indeed. might’s not always right, but it sure
puts on a convincing show. And because,
to the victor belong the spoils, endure
what he must, force was an enabling clause.
A serviceman deprived the country that
he served -- following an uncle who fought
in World War 2 -- he now had self-styled autocrats
as leaders. Submit to them, or get caught
by the law. Being bullied by tough guys
sure beats what incarceration implies.

And so, he let his liberal peers deride
him like they treated Jews at Buchenwald.
His overlords deprived him of his pride,
but the book knowledge he’d ardently scrawled
indelibly on the walls of his brain
weren’t denied. Some kind person would cede
this, many years before this harsh campaign
took root and choked his birthright’s liberty.
Forget the social contract binding all
to all, within the rule of law. It just
affords provocateurs the wherewithal
to trample someone’s fallow field to dust.
“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,”
the saying goes. Indeed, his tree still grows
amidst the storms. And there’s the likelihood
that yet more years of suffering may sow
the seeds for piddling harvests still to come,
with badgered senses rendering him numb.