It’s a neat linguistic trick, a pun for the age,
A headline’s sharp hook on a gilded page.
The "I" is yourself, the singular soul,
The "U" is the union, a shared common goal,
Then "S" for the States, the land on the map,
And "A" for America, snug in the lap
Of a brilliant acronym, a debt turned to art---
A promissory note tattooed on the heart.
An I.O.U.S.A., a clever, sad song,
A market of promises, short-term and long.
We owe it to ourselves, this union, this place,
To build the next future with grit and with grace.
A national mortgage, a contract, a start.
But wait.
What is an IOU, if not a confession
Of a hole in the fabric, a gap in possession?
A promise extracted from breath yet to come,
A lien on the sunrise, a tax on the sum
Of labor not given and lives yet unled,
A mortgage not on a house, but on the head
Of a child not yet born, who wakes in the dark,
To sign with his future a covenant stark.
Who is this "I," swollen with wanting and dread?
Who is this "U," anesthetized, overfed,
Rolled over in Congress, in lobbies, in vaults?
And who are the scribes cataloguing the faults
While the ink on the note turns from black to a red
That’s no metaphor now, but the blood of the dead?
Is it me? Is it you? Is it us in a trance,
Watching the long, slow, leveraged end of the dance?
And what of the "SA"?
Sanctuary? Salvation? A solvent charade?
A suffix that turns a debt slip to a nation
And nations to debt slips, a slow liquidation.
What a sterile, accountant’s moral disgrace,
To see a republic not as a living face,
Not as a home, a hunger, a huddled refusenik’s plea,
But a balance-sheet entity, S.A., Inc.
Whose assets are rivers, whose liabilities are the poor,
Whose goodwill is a flag they haven’t yet torn.
Whose debt-service coverage ratio is paid
With the marrow of the sick and the dreams that are made
To be packaged, securitized, bundled, and sold
To a cold, distant future too weary to scold.
It’s the quantified soul of a people in hock,
It’s the key in the door and the click of the lock.
I.O.U.S.A.---a long-term debit of the spirit,
Recited so often we no longer hear it.
Not a promise to build, but a writ to collect,
A future not honored, but just cashed as a check
Post-dated to Never, on the bank of Despair,
Leaving nothing for breathing but the audited air.