America,
What are your touchstones?
What is it that allows American arrogance?
I don’t say that judgmentally.
It’s able to simply sit like a toad in a puddle.
It’s a toad. It’s in a puddle.
In this case, the toad’s the truth.
In another case, it might be the puddle.

Lately, a lot has been said about guns.
Is it guns? Is that a touchstone?
You could make a case.
Lately the case seems very gory, and hate-filled.
Guns seem to have something to do with racism
and kind of sideways religious intolerance.
And hate. It’s rolled up into a
Tangled confluence.

Is it money?
Our money or will anyone’s money do?
Or is it the system that delivers the money?
Or is it the people to whom the system delivers the money?
I get lost in the hierarchy.
Seems like a lot of hate in the world about money right now.
Or maybe it’s the system that makes Americans hate.
Or the people who the system works for.
It’s kind of tangly too.

Is it freedom? I love freedom in America.
Freedom is great. More freedom is greater.
I’m free to do anything I want in America.
I can walk down your street with guns and money.
And I can say hateful things at the top of my lungs.
That’s freedom and it takes
a thousand Hell’s Angles spending money on guns on the head of a pin
to keep us free.

God bless Hell’s Angles.
God bless freedom.