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Aaron LaLux Jul 2016
America’s Son


Dear America,
what have you become,
so busy worried about where you’re going,
that you’ve forgotten where you’re from,

I am your begotten son,

and I love you,

I love you,
more than these wonderful words can say,
I love you but I don’t know what to do,
because I fear that you’ve gone astray,

like an abusive drunken Trump father,
or a used up distracted Hilary mother,

you seem so drunkenly enraged by greed,
engaged in a lustful want that you falsely believe is a need,

Oh say can you see,
by the dawn’s early light,
we bomb people we’ve never even seen before,
something must be wrong because nothing feels right,

why,
why am I scared of you,

maybe it’s your violent tendencies,
maybe it’s your egotistical ways,
maybe it’s how you’ve created all these enemies,
and now these enemies won’t just leave us alone and go away,

Oh say,
can you see,
by the dawn’s early light,
you are my parents and I look up to you,
I love to see the Statue of Liberty’s guiding light,

but honestly,
at this point I don’t know what to do,
I am your son,
and even after all you’ve put me through I still love you,

but I am absolutely terrified at what you’ve become,
what we’ve all become,
and even when I run far away to try and escape,
I realize we are family so no matter how far I run,

I am still an American,
because I am America’s Son,

come,
back home,
back to the times of apple pies peace and butterflies,
before,
the drones,
and satellites appeared ominously like shooting stars in the summer skies,

come,
inside,
let’s talk about life over home cooked pie,

like why have we had to capitalize off destruction,
why do we still have war what is it’s real function,
why destroy when we can construct a constant connection,
a solid foundation with good intentions and clear instructions,

so we can finally heal and move forward as a family that properly functions,

be a good husband,
be a good wife,
be a good person,
have a good life,

look,
it’s not that complicated,
see all us children would forgive all your mistakes,
if only you’d just admit that you made them,

he served two tours in Iraq gave his all and lost his life,
and all he got in return is the grave you gave him,

God please save him,

he was a good kid,
even though he killed,
he did it because his Uncle Sam told him to,
please don’t place him beneath us in Hell,

Uncle Sam didn’t know any better either,
and it seems his parents had raised him quite well,
but Uncle Sam’s not his brother’s keeper,
I am and I know my brothers well,
and when any of us lose any of our lives,
we only pray we leave with a story to tell,

because maybe we believe,
that when we leave this life we lead,
at least we leave the world a little bit better,
from sea to shining sea,

at least,
a little bit,
better…

Whatever,
what more do you want me to say,
I love you I am your son,
but I’m scared and that feeling won’t go away,

Oh say,
can you see,
by the dawn’s early light,
I write by the light of the bright stars,
and through these words I’ve earned my stripes,

and honestly America,
as much as I distrust and despise you I still put no one above you,
even though I’m ashamed of you for invading our privacy like an enema,
I don’t even trust you anymore and I used to only trust you,
you’re like a blemish on otherwise perfect skin like eczema,
I’m embarrassed of the ways in which you’ve behaved and all you’ve put us through,

but I am still your begotten son,

and I still love you…

Oh say can you see,
by the dawn’s early light…

∆ Aaron La Lux ∆

Volume 1 of my new trilogy about Hollywood is now available worldwide.
I’ve decided to donate ALL of the profits of this new trilogy to three charities.
Volume 1 profits will go to a charity that prevents ****** abuse and assault on children.
Please support my new book and by doing so you’ll not only be helping prevent ****** assault, but you’ll also be helping set an important precedent in making a statement to other artist,
saying that we all need to start giving back and helping each other more than we have.
PLUS you’ll also be getting an epic book of poetry from an epic best selling poet.
Let’s make charity cool and change the perception of coolness for the better.
Who cares what car you drive or what clothes you wear anymore?
What now matters is what you’re doing to help those with less.
We all live in this world we together and we can all give more.

It took me six months and thousands of dollars to create this trilogy in it’s entirety,
and all I am asking is for is a few dollars and a few minutes of your time.
We made the last book I published #1 and we can do it again.
Purchase a copy for less than it cost for a cup of coffee,
and WRITE AN HONEST REVIEW about the book.
If you really don’t have 3 dollars to spend,
at least repost this message,
or respond to this message,
or something,
anything.


Here is the link for purchasing/reviewing the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01I4621OE
God Bless America
I'm sitting in the corner
With a whiskey and a smoke
The barkeep pours another
The waitress tells a joke

The jukebox is on auto
But still, people go and choose
I just sit here with my whiskey
Dropping ashes on my shoes

Another Day, Another Bottle
My life is dragging by
Another Day, Another Bottle
I'm just waiting here to die
Another Day, Another Bottle
I gave it my best try
Another Day, Another Bottle
I'm just waiting here to die

Beer no longer cuts it
It's just whiskey, hold the ice
A maduro or cohiba
Makes it go down rather nice

The barkeep keeps his distance
Knows I'll order when I'm dry
But, I nurse each whiskey longer
'cause I've just no cash to buy

Another Day, Another Bottle
My life is dragging by
Another Day, Another Bottle
I'm just waiting here to die
Another Day, Another Bottle
I gave it my best try
Another Day, Another Bottle
I'm just waiting here to die

The jukebox plays some country
It plays Cash, Nelson and Joe South
It doesn't play the new stuff
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth

I sit here in the corner
With my whiskey and my smoke
Neither one has killed me
But ****, they've made me broke

Another Day, Another Bottle
My life is dragging by
Another Day, Another Bottle
I'm just waiting here to die
Another Day, Another Bottle
I gave it my best try
Another Day, Another Bottle
I'm just waiting here to die
bottle
Robert C Howard Aug 2013
at the fete du bons vieux temps - Cahokia, Illinois

White clouds of rosin dust
Flew off Geoff's fiddle strings
As his earth dance
Soared above the pulsing
Of friends on bass and guitar.

Tuniced men bowed
To their bonneted ladies
Bedecked in colonial frocks.
In turn each pair sashayed
Down and up the line,
Whirled and laced their way
Through outstretched hands
Of family, friends and neighbors
Shaping an arch at line's end
For all the rest to pass beneath.

All across our country's timescape
Countless bridal pairs
Have sealed their sacraments
Spinning in the whirlwind
Of the Virginia Reel -
With each interclasping of arms
A blessing upon their unions.

Geoff lifted his bow from the strings,
And bowed with his band to receive
The applause rippling the air
Like the patter of ancestral rain
Nourishing the sweet soil
Of our common earthly essence.

February, 2007
Included in Unity Tree published by Createspace and available from Amazon.com in both book and Kindle formats
Robert C Howard Aug 2013
A bridge is a curious thing to cover.
mile after mile of naked road -
then a wooden box over stream or ravine.

Why not cover the road instead
leaving the bridge unclothed?
But where's the charm in that, you say?  

So perhaps it was fashioned for Currier and Ives
or to embellish the music
of iron shod hooves on oaken planks.

Or maybe was built as a kiosk
for fading feed and carnival posters
and jackknife glyphs of amorous initials.

No, all our covered bridges, imagined or real,
guide our passage over deadly waters -
holding us fast on the road
and safe from drowning.  

*March,  2007
Included in Unity Tree - Collected poems
pub. CreateSpace - Amazon.com
Elaenor Aisling Oct 2015
I am driving home under the melancholy grey sky that reminds you of the empty spaces in your chest. Sickly yellow street lamps are coming on, one by one, highlighting the potholes and cracks in the road. I can't help but picture what it might have looked like in the 60's. The still all American heartland town, when the rusted buildings were new and shining, when the once grand houses had fresh paint, well manicured yards, un-littered by fake deer and old tires. I remember old news papers from estate sale boxes, pictures of women in smart dresses with cinched waists, sitting prettily in the society section. They are probably dead now. Buried in the cemetery on a hill that overlooks the city, and down onto the tiny matchbox houses now boarded up or falling into disrepair. Still yet it seems maybe it was never new. There was always the dust, the smudge, the ghostly fog on old mirrors. I wonder how it will continue, or if it will at all, perpetually rise and fall, as all things do, or simply fall, the lifeblood of youth trickling out and down the freeway, or soaking into the already saturated ground.
     Hopeless seems so dark a word, but the truth was never pretty, was it? Perhaps, here, is the hardness of truth, in its grit, its blood. The pebbles that stick in your palms and skinned knees. They once said the depressed were the most realistic of us all, that it was the perpetual state of the human mind-- everyone else in optimistic denial. I was inclined to believe them. Our rose colored glasses taint the world cotton-candy pink while E-flat minor and discorded harmonies echo somewhere in the mountains, longing, hard, sad.
     What haunts you? I want to ask the old rail road tracks. Who died here? I say to the gaping cinder block house. Do you remember what laughter sounds like? I know you remember the bark of dogs, the screech of tires, gunshots or fireworks, who can tell. Dust the memories off the way we dusted sawdust and insulation from the boxes in the hoarder's attic-- find them suspended just the way you left them, open the room-- unchanged since the children left. The toys lie on the floor where they fell from small hands. The safest memories are the ones unremembered. The more they are recalled the more corrupted they become till we are painting our own picture all over again, and we are Van Gogh on a rainy night. Is that what happened? You remembered them all too often. You stared at the sun till you were blind and wondered why you could not see the stars. Yes, that must be it. You clutched those slips of laughter so greedily-- recalled them again and again until they faded, till now you hear nothing but the wind, and cough nothing but ashes.
Messy, 'specially on Sundays.
Feet a'shamble from stumblin' drunkhappy.
"It's all good, baby," Blakey yells over the drums.

Bourbon flavored women hard to swallow
with their jagged softness. Smoking section (whites) stares
down dance floor (everyone else) with guilt induced jealousy.

Coltrane's back in Philly studyin.'
Pinstriped chuckle from the Rosenbergs;
kinetic energy giving birth to the cool.

The trumpeter's high turns his tool into a weapon.
The sound briefly stealing him from his demons.
"I'll find a guy when I finish my set."

Black and white televisions: blacks in white suites
Smiling china white for an all white audience.
The movers, to this point, have only been black.

Little hero Harry thinks
  blacks and whites should die on the battlefield together.
Everyone's starting to get it.

"That guitar sweeter than my old lady."
Charlie and Miles holding each other's needles
while Thelonious and his hard candy go bad.

Leanin' on bricks in a back alley.
The circle passes the joint around like the good times.
"Just keep em rollin."

The skirts expand and deflate wildly to the rhythm.
Pure sweat melting into the floors like drops of water on roots.
A melody never heard before.
Dreams of Sepia Aug 2015
She found herself in moments,
in the cracks between the pavement,

staring at her moonlit reflection,
twisting the time left to her to perfection,

aged thirty & counting
clouds passing above,

she kissed a couple of frogs
one of them, a Mr Prince Jnr

20 years older, who she hoped
would leave her a fortune

instead, he left her out on the street
smashed up, in the soup kitchen she moaned

about his new, younger lover
getting angrier with every hit

then aimed a shiny gun
at him to prove her point but missed

one day a preacher came along
that showed her the error of her ways

' Come to him, our Lord, child' he said
& she did. People heard her sing gospel out in the street.

It turned out she had quite a voice
& this sweet gift did not go unnoticed

now she's a rich singer of great repute
a happy end you can't refute
Just a little somethin' I came up with.. set in the US of my imagination/ general impressions from  films/literature/popular culture etc... not based on any specific true stories but it makes a good yarn...as for the religious aspect of this, I don't mean to preach about religion, it was just necessary for the story. If you're familiar with Bertold Brecht. ' The Threepenny Opera', I was thinking of it when I wrote this too.
Dreams of Sepia Jul 2015
Railroad track
in ole' tall grass singing
small crickets chirping
Matt Mar 2015
Thank You Mr. Barstow
For your beautifully narrated
Video of family camping

During the summers from 1957 to 1961
The five-member Barstow family
Of Wethersfield,  Connecticut,
Set out to visit all 48
Of the then United States of America
On a series of month-long camping trips

They made sure
To go swimming in each of the Great Lakes

The family members
Positioned their bodies
So they would
Create the first letter
Of each lake

All the lakes looked so similar
They came up with this idea as a way to know
Which lake they were pictured in

Priceless

The son rolls up the back window
Of the station wagon

It reads, "Y'all Come
Sightseeing South
Summer - 1959

It is great to see an American family
Having so much fun

May God continue to bless the Barstow family
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