They sing the blues
in shouting matches
with co workers,
with strangers at bars,
with family rarely seen
over Thanksgiving tables.

They play a sad tune
with guns under pillows
and flaming hatred
fanned every day
by radio chatter
and at night
by tv news.

Lonely vibrato from
a street corner guitar echoes
in 2 a.m. tumblers of scotch
as they pace hallways
imagining a country
that never quite was.

Beneath red faced yelling
and epithets
spit like venom,
beneath the scowls
and finger pointing
lie reservoirs of tears
behind locked spillways,
and children trembling,
cornered by the biggest
bully of them all.

If you train your ears,
you can hear
their song of lament
drifting across the land
like a funeral dirge.