How It's Made

Imagine I wrote a piece of prose
And not knowing how it would go
Sliced everything-
The sentences apart
Just for the sake of flow.

Imagine I then took that prose
And innocently enough at first
Switched the wording
To be less direct
And placed it into verse.

Then imagine I called it a poem
And I was as proud as I could be
To have been for once a poet
And to have created poetry.

The Land of the Free

They asked what was America
And what it means to be an American
And fed up with history and philosophy
I told them I had no idea, nobody did
And so they asked me then are you proud
Proud to be an American?
And I told them my parents were Chinese
And so am I it appears,
The son of unromantic immigrants,
And no one calls me American
But I’m called Chinese a lot.
And they said You’ve got to be an American
You were born here right?
And I told them, no longer fed up
With history and philosophy
What they already knew
That America was a land of immigrants
And that while people see me and say “Chinese”
And see Jews and say “Jew”
No one looks at the German-Irish-British-Scandinavian-Italian-Pole
As anything but American,
But hell
The blacks are still called Blacks
And African-American.
American simply means
That’s where you were born
Or that’s where you’re living.
American doesn’t mean who you are.
So I’m proud to be an American I guess
Or I’m proud to be where I’m living in America
Where the housing rates are steady
And the people are good
But I’m not proud of who I am
And no one should be
Because who you are is made by other people.
And the people who asked me about America
Gave me a funny look
And all walked away
But the last thing they said was
“Fuckin’ chinks don’t know what it means to be patriotic”
And I guess they were right.