Land of the Free
We are not a melting pot
We are an assimilation machine
Land of the recently paroled
Home of the big talkers
Salute the flag of those on meds
They are white and they like to sue
Our national bird is an apex predator
We produce MLKs and David Dukes
But we only kill the MLKs
We split the atom and we split families
at the border, we invade foreign countries
to protect our financial interests
We pride ourselves on our prison system
It is vast, we have more of them
than we have casinos
And we have a lot of casinos
Reflections
Reflecting on my reflection in
the mirror, or like a vampire
seeing nothing,
would that in some ways be
a mercy to not see
yourself but merely to project
nothingness, the lightness
of not being, not being
trapped in that mirror
How lucky the vampire, to
not have to see itself after
draining all those people of
their blood
Samuel Palos Kraemer is a poet from Southern California. He is currently incarcerated, has lived on the streets, and is a recovering addict. His work has been published in Street Sheet and Tacenda. He writes almost every day.