Essence...

 

November 2: The New Colossus

On this date in 1883, Emma Lazarus wrote the sonnet, “The New Colossus.” Its lines appear on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1912. The sonnet was solicited by William Maxwell Evarts as a donation to an auction, conducted by the “Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty” to raise funds to build the pedestal. Listen to her poem on Lit2Go.

© 23 October 2020, the Griot Poet

The US is the same nation:

That ripped children from Native American parents,

And sold them to reservations,

For indoctrination,

And subordination of their culture, customs, and native languages,

 

The US is the same nation:

That ripped children from African diaspora parents,

Selling them into slavery on other plantations,

For rape, torture, and indoctrination,

And subordination of their culture, customs, and languages,

 

The US is the same nation:

That ripped children from Central American parents,

Giving them to Betsy DeVos “adoption agencies,”

For rape, torture, and indoctrination,

Into the nether world of child sex slavery,

And subordination of their culture, customs, and languages,

 

What really is the difference?

 

1776, 1787:

11 years between a document,

And the constitutional convention,

Ratifying the confederation to a nation,

Based on Democratic Republicanism,

And a southern compromise,

Making the part of humanity, I am part three-fifths human,

 

233, 244

Years between a document,

And the current moment,

Where a regurgitated phrase plagiarized from Ronald Reagan:

“Make America great again,”

Who said “our best days are behind us,”

Ripped Social Security benefits,

To line the pockets of oligarch sociopaths,

 

We have “kiddie concentration camps” at the border,

 

What really is the difference?

 

We suffer a new 9-11 every three to four days,

The virus doesn’t care particularly about political parties as it rages,

 

If Orange Satan steals four more years,

It says more about us than him,

 

WE are arrogant, bullying, callous, devious, envious, felonious, gluttonous, hateful, ignorant, jealous, killers, lying, nefarious, obfuscating, perilous, quarreling, racist, sadistic, terrorists, underhanded, violent, wanton, xenophobic, yakamilk, zealous,

 

I can think of more superlative adjectives,

If we get four more years of this,

Forget misinterpretations of Emma Lazarus,

Our “New Colossus” poem isn’t what we thought it meant,

Lady Liberty is rusted and spent,

 

Then, this is not American exceptionalism:

If we don’t on November third^, repudiate this,

The last four years, for all eternity, is genuinely our essence.