My Country Right But Wrong

by Randall Rogers

America you make me feel so proud
and so guilty
I don’t know with whom to join
the left or the right

as they say if you’re not a liberal
before thirty you have no heart
and if you’re not a conservative
after thirty you have no brain

so we that give a damn
Americans are caught in
a conundrum
whether to stay with the job house
kids, mortgage cars and sundry toys or chuck it all and join
what Kerouac called “the rucksack revolution”

Because just by being an American you are part of the problem.
Being an American born and raised there only makes it worse.
We’re destroying the world
but I’m sure as hell running to the Embassy
calling help! help! to the Marine Guards
to let me in should the shit hit the fan in
any of these tin-horn dictator and fist-fights
in-parliament countries I’ve currently been floating
around in.