EXPATRIATE
Ostensibly dedicated to Alec Baldwin
I first left when My Country bombed Cambodia
and our smug thug of a president explained how and why
it was necessary and I knew
he was telling us how it had been explained to him
that it was necessary. I wasn't even five, but in my heart
in my mind this wasn't My Country anymore
My Country doesn't lie, My Country
doesn't carpet bomb innocent jungles, My Country
doesn't know anybody called The Enemy
and in my young mind I formed the word barely learned
EXPATRIATE!
Just Plain Gone, Jack, outta here, outta this dumb place
where any dumb kid can grow up to be president and here's your proof, and I stayed gone
until he waved his victory V's before getting on the copter
and copping out of American Life for the next dozen years.
I went again about age fourteen
with the mystery that might or might not be God swarming in my head
when the Iranians had My People locked up
beaten bruised starved in the Embassy
and the best we could do was traipse around wearing
AYATOLAH ASSAHOLA t-shirts
and bragging about how great America was
and our stupid grinning president kept claiming
that all that could be done was being done
and the secret to getting My People free turned out to be, apparently,
hiring a b-movie actor to play the role of president
(any stupid kid, and there's your proof)
EXPATRIATE!
Not even leaving a shadow, Jack, too gone, outta here
and taking my marbles with me; this place
has gone bughouse, demented, around the freakin' bend
and damned if I have any desire to go with it.
And this time I stayed gone, for years
while I learned that MY COUNTRY robbed land from the natives
with treaties that MY COUNTRY wrote
in MY COUNTRY's language
for MY COUNTRY's good
Manifest Goddamn Destiny
and a little later on MY COUNTRY dropped a bomb
on Hiroshima (BOOOOSSSHHH!)
which maybe we had to, but then they had to find out
if the other one worked, so there goes Nagasaki (BOOOOSSHHH!)
And after that we went to help out the gooks in Korea
(which was confusing, because here we were fighting those gooks for these gooks, and those gooks were being backed by the Chinks, and they weren't gooks at all, but they were Godless commies, which was almost as bad as being gooks, and anyway it was for the good of the Free World, which was us and anyone else we picked, but it was mainly us since the Limeys and the Frogs crapped out on us and the Krauts and the Polacks were all turning into Godless Commies...)
And, dear God, it looked like I might never come home!
But little by little I found reasons to come back
terrible government, but better than all the others
tolerance, or at least the face of it
a semblance, a taste, a lick and a promise, at least, of Freedom
friends and family, home, native land
America! I'm giving you one last chance!
I'm coming back, perhaps for good
or at least as long as I can stand it
I am, after all, an American, and I can't stay EXPATRIATE forever
Hearth and home, here I come; America, I'm giving you
one last chance, don't blow it, because I swear,
if you don't behave yourself
I'm outta here.