Baby American Boy

How do you live in a world
that stands for nothing
and where nothing ever stands?
Where a thousand mouths open to sing
and taste salt water instead?
Fresh earth is being ripped up,
soon to be replaced by concrete
to make everything seem so new
while the sky is losing blue.
And out of the gravel
and cigarette ash,
a Baby American Boy was born.

How do you grow in a world
where the ceiling’s the sky’s the limit?
In nine houses, washed aside,
a picture lies on the ground,
crumpled since I can remember.
Father comes from nowhere;
not even he knows himself.
His mother could be Athena,
or his father, in a damp cell.
Mother comes from somewhere,
but she never seemed like the type
to look backwards over her shoulder
or think about it more than twice.
And when dinner is served,
if ever it is served,
who will be the first to finish,
and then slam a door?
The living room is magazine clean,
and on the black leather couch,
eating a bowl full of Life,
sits the Baby American Boy.

How do you see in a world
where the smoke travels thick in the skyway?
The faceless, jailguard bus smoke,
frenzied between Twin Cities,
carries over to the coast:
To the City of City Lights;
To the City of Peril Bridges;
To the City of the Unshakable Needle.
To the house on the hollow mountain,
down the winding Dark Hollow Road.
To the house with a skull in the window,
fuzzy, drooping lamps, inside all aglow.
Daddy take me home,
the Baby American Boy once cried.

How do you love in a world
where everything’s written in chalk?
If love really is a temple, then
our faces flow from the foundations.
And if writing really is love’s prayer,
this bible is still being written;
this revolution is still an embryo,
until all Our words are One.
You know the story,
the one with the pastors and the monks,
who all make you pray with their handcuffs.
One day, your hands might be free
from this Baby American Boy.

How can we go on pretending
to know the answers to questions
that were nothing but dust to begin with?
Just year after year blown off of the shelf—
Our world, a bird in a too-small shell.
Where we get lost in our bedrooms,
when we’re really just losing ourselves.
Where we all collapse for our keep,
and stumble on, too proud for our sleep.
Too dumb to sing a coda,
too numb to take a stand,
but no one, no one can crawl as fast
as the Baby American Boy can.