American Love Story

America, 

Don’t you love a reclamation project?

Let’s make our mistakes in sun gaze, 

I don’t got no dark to sell you

For front page or water cooler gathering,

Just a cautious tale of truth and reconciliation

My mistakes build from frame of momma backbone,

Who props real careful like-

Special like-

to uphold a candle light to shade’s contrast

So America, 

Don’t you love a rise and fall? 

A guise performed until break crack and stretch

Calloused grip hanging on to cliff covered sandpaper

Reaching for acknowledgement 

— Or anything positive

Printed sealed and delivered for news release

Why do you want everything? 

If I give you my speech

you take my thoughts

If I give you my life

you take assumptions

America, 

Don’t you let a comeback story?

Down seven on a two-minute drill

Backed up into a wall

You love to see us sweat for it 

Pressure is your generational ambiance,

This burden heavy like doc marten boot bottom, 

America you love arrogance yet 

groundedness but

bitch, I’m too fly

My family ties was noose tight and tied

To a

Style which goes out

On a high but never too high

So you can-

drag me down from an air of forgiveness into a new height

“You the man now” I’m told

So “Carry your truth right,”

America, 

I hear you like a spectacle

Vicariously living through silicon boxes

Black mirrors flip and watch us see everything we want to be without risk 

But we show up to it like it’s our job

Just to say we took a part of

No sorry, sorry,

Just to say we want parts of

No sorry, sorry,

I mean to say to say we are a part of 

This reclamation without reconciliation

America,

Don’t you want to see my chains dangle from nape to kneecap?

Enough to double dutch so I can jump when you say to 

Just to keep what I got

Dear, America

I feel free but

my hands do not

The plan of life to bloom, grow, break then rot

I think about a lot but never too much about where I’m planted

And that is the point 

Who doesn’t love an American love story