The America I remember has been stolen,
it doesn’t seem to be the way
it was when I first laid
eyes on the French mistress
holding a light to the world’s
repossessed and charmed poetry fanatic.
The bars look uncomfortable now
and not welcoming to the stranger
at the door, clad in clothes
of home but willing to
change, to leave the will behind
and play the game, until it suits
to change the rules, one message at a time.
The America I loved, still love, for passion
never truly leaves the veins once infected,
seems to have forgotten what made it
make me love it, tales of a world beyond a world,
where open skies were filled with wonder
and the dense fog of European stillness
long since discarded with a smile
and a large bourbon whisky
in a 77th Street booth;
the young woman behind the bar I never realised
loving me enough to send me home.
The America I know has been stolen,
pumped full of adrenaline and bile
as it searches for an uncertain identity,
as it hunts for the money to pay
the ransom, unaware that payment
is too itself, secure bondage,
liberation not on the agenda
for those whose masks
have slipped…
not in the America I once knew.
Ian D. Hall 2016