Happy 250th Birthday

Into the city streets

strutted the Brownshirts,

locked and loaded

and wearing steel-toed

jackboots and masks.

D.C. and Los Angeles

will never ever be the 

same again. They pulled 

people from automobiles 

and out of lines at car 

washes and big box 

stores and tamale vendors.

The thick-witted goons

flung their victims

to the pavement and

shackled them with

chains in front of their

young children. They 

didn’t identify themselves

but to brandish weapons.

Those they seized

were all guilty:

of being brown-skinned

and wanting a

better life for themselves

and their families.

The answer was to

send them to countries

where they don’t

speak the language

and to rip their

children from their

breasts and imprison

them in cages.

Perhaps, I thought,

this is not

what Americans

signed up for 250

years ago.