put down your crack bowls
and your republican flags...
and let's go walking thru
the streets and alleys of America....

let's walk past the empty houses
with foreclosure signs in the yard...
past the vacant factory buildings
where the homeless break in
at night and sleep...

past the lily white churches
and the dead zone schools...
past the county jails and the courthouses
and the rooms where lawyers
buy and sell justice...

past the housing projects
where babies buy groceries...
down to the tent cities where
dreams hang in the air like opium.

down the dark streets where young
girls and boys sell their bodies
for their vampire pimps...
and everyday citizens buy them!

down to the unemployment offices
where angry people stand in
numbered lines...
past renegade gas pumps
guarded by dollar store slaves...

past the words of Jefferson, Franklin,
and Thomas Paine....
to the hypnotic ads of puffy-faced
liars with titles and plans...

down to the cemetary where
the last shreds of freedom
lie in unmarked graves....
and we call this....

America!

Eric Cockrell

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/america-revisited/