Red's rockets glare quietly, now,
so bombs can clean the air;
bursting open smokey mountain tops,
it all sounds laissez faire,
spilling borders onto levy-crops,
across the nations which we lie atop,
we will grow until we learn to stop
the polar ice caps going melting pot.

We cast our shadows like our votes,
and spin our questions like a globe--
where the middle finger lands, we stand,
one nation: indivisible,

except for that once / never again,
then everything changed / never forget,
now we know better / not in my name,
this time they'll pay / not on my dollar.

System, pull on your soap-box slippers,
warm up the Milky Way, fear only Andromeda,
and look up,

Atlas is shrugging.
Four billion years of active duty
and he can still feel the darkness.

Once there was a light, and it was good,
and it warmed, as it should,
but then it cooled,
and there was man,
pressing forward folded hands
around meditated gifts,
drawing monolithic plans
on the skin of the slave
stretched over barrels for drums,
black powder messiahs rolling cannons.
Down cobble stone streets,
they marched to a beat
heard barked through the alleys as ministers' feet.
They raised voices like hands,
"fists and feet make the man,"
holding guns to the earth with a list of demands.

Now, Atlas, listen--the people, they whisper.

"We are six billion nations, protected by God.
We go where you go,
so march on,"
and on,
and on.

01/08/2008

Author's Note: Rewrite of "Did you watch them tear down that wall?"

Posted on 01/08/2008
Copyright © 2024 Matthew Zangen