This is my American Spirit
Though I am loathe, but deserved to hear it
This is my generation in a long, sour drag:
Bohemes and hipsters, the self-important type
Self-serving directness with subtle insouciance
Self-righteous without e’er scents of conviction
Qualities, to all, vogue slimming befit
This, this is my American Spirit.

I’ll be the equalizer in a furtive game of chess
And acquaintance, its partner, arbitrating
I’ll wear the habit of means and humility
An ashen cherry, flicked, waiting to be
The pyrrhic finite ember and pastiche memory
Escape is apparent in discontinuity, my
Means to ravel a courser bond in someone,
As only a blush reminder only when they all clear it
Yes, this is my, my American Spirit.

We’ll have a game of butting desires
‘Tween all those appetites and some self-respect
Only, I know, to lose out in the end.
Is there a place for dignity to prevail
Or charm in an attempt likely to fail?
Can there be eyes open, minds or thought
To gentle pride its combatant ‘gainst
Unconscious abuses: yea or not?
But I will know irony as means to an end
Turned cheek from machination
That I can do, I can pretend
When the veil may be lifted—that I fear it
This, this is my American Spirit.

Of course I enable, for the cynosure, the dissonances
Supplant for fraternity fraternal-ligature
Too obvious is resolve ‘neath shaw of fleeting smoke
My own wants impeded, kept at a distance.
For, oh, Fortune! How you have written
Some conscience to mend it to others kept calm
A charity in practice as this cigarette is long
While vice, in all aspects, is the most correct wrong
But hummed out in truth as a fascist, he ought
I’ll turn to a tonic of strength to delude
That pretense and pride the conscience denude.
In some be it strong in others enthralled
Whilst ******* our prayer beads of looking-glass selves
Quietly burning the vestigial gods
That brought us a new light or perspective on things
And though we are loathe, we despise to hear it,
This, this is our American Spirit.