Boy Scout Shota
WHAT IS AMERICA
What is America?
It isn’t an easy answer
As it was with the Pledge of Allegiance
Said with a hand over my heart
In a two-room schoolhouse in Maine
Said in unison with other white students
WE had learned in a young heart
Within a week
Without out any explanation
1958
America
It was a flag.
The State of Maine was one the States
One on the edge of America
1960 my family moved to the South Shore of Boston.
Deeper into America
I went to a Catholic School
Sister Mary Magdalene taught us geography.
I memorized the states and the capitols.
Sister Mary Magdalene awarded me a gold star.
I learned more about America.
My uncles and the men of our neighborhood had fought wars.
Against the Imperial Germans,
Against the Nazis
Against the Japs
Against the North Koreans and Commie Chinese Reds
American stood for freedom
Superman stood for truth, justice and the American Way.
Speaking was not allowed in parochial school
Not by the students.
Opening your mouth earned a trip to Mother Superior’s office
A wooden ruler on the palm
Ten times on the knuckles for bad boys.
Freedom was a word practiced by the nuns
Ten years in that town
Under the Blue Hills
Boy Scouts
Memorial Day parades
Veterans of the wars.
America was in South Vietnam.
Older teens fought the Viet Cong.
For freedom.
At school I learned about America
History
More Geography
It was the Sixties
Some things did not make sense
I was a youth on a rampage,
Rock and roll, cheap cars, gas 30 cents a gallon, Louie Louie, Janet Stetson, The Velvet Underground, gas 35 cents a gallon.
July 4, 1968
The Quincy Quarries
Brewster’s
A 110-foot granite cliff
Jimmie Lianetti dives off the Rail
Something goes wrong.
Our idol breaks his back
We drag him from the water
Not dead but never again him
I finish high school.
My draft number is 91
Soldiers and civilians die in Vietnam.
If I don’t go to college
I could be one of them.
I’m not a fighter
Not a baby killer.
I go back to school
To learn more about America
Linda Imhoff.
An elegant junior exec at my father’s office
Long legs, aristocratic accent, clean shaven body,
We fuck at the Hatchshell by the Charles River
Emerson Lake and Palmer onstage
We were in the bushes.
Gas 38 cents a gallon
The 1970s were not kind to America
The Quincy Quarries were closed by the city
Boston buried them in the rubble from the Big Dig
All to save commuters fifteen minutes
The tunnel saved them nothing
It wasn’t all gone
The concerts, the fights after school, the racism, the bullying, the murders, guns, the them against the other them.
I was a hippie,
I am a punk
I am a father
I am a grandfather.
I am nothing
I am everything.
I am an American
I know what it means to me
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
And that’s it.