For July 4th again
Note; This Poem is from thirty years ago.
Has anything changed
Burn This Poem
Dedicated to Tommi Avicolli
This Poem is about the flag
This Poem is about Freedom
Allegedly the same subject
The American Night has grown colder
back room butchers sharped their rusted, waiting knives
for women of all colours
who would dare
to choose their own lives
while on the frozen citified streets,
we are infested with homeless
A solution,
do we have a final solution?
Even the artists have hard choices
and should not chooses to portray naked men
in the act of choosing to be hard
with other naked men.
This Poem is about the flag
This Poem is about Freedom
You or I can burn the flag
Only a Jessie Helms, though, can burn freedom
If I burn this Poem, about the flag
is that my freedom
or my crime
2) This Poem is about the flag
This Poem is about freedom
Three hundred National Guardspeople have died in Central America
This is about how some see the flag.
I cannot be proud of murder
for Flag, for Freedom, for the American Way of Strife
We have burned villages in Nicaragua
as though it were Vietnam
as though it were Osage Avenue
There, as here, playing murder the victim
those with Aids, those without homes,
those diseased with drugs
Burn This Poem-rage 2
Is it a crime to cause people to die
by hope withheld
No, That is Government Policy
Crime is when an artist shows two men in love
when a flag, not a person, is burned
when anyone
still dares a dream
3) This Poem is about the Flag
This Poem is about Freedom
Oh, for the day when the anti-abortionists link hands with ACT UP,
or is pro life only pro selected lives
Oh, for the night when’ violence is declared obscene
in the true works of art our fleet lives are
Oh, for the week when Jessie Helms declares my new book of Poems
Pornagraphy and Treasonous, and Congress, in heated National CNN Debate-
Still, you can be murdered
from wearing the wrong skin
in the wrong right-wing neighborhood.
To live Black in this country
has to mean living in a constant state of undeclared war,
as to live as a Womyn,! As a Gay or Lesbian who declares it to the skies,
to speak out when silence is the only safety
I want to say SHOUTINGS:-
This Poem is about the Flag
This Poem is about Freedom
I cannot sell this Poem
not give it away
Guess I have to burn it.
Bob Small 3-7-91, from 6-30-90
robertthesmall 