American Fall

I must admit I love
Even the way she lies
Rolling her eyes and heaving her sighs
Tuned-up and spit-shined
All wound up and out of her mind
Not a thought in her head
About the pricetags of play
That’s okay
She doesn’t pay ’em anyway

Reckoning clings
On frostbitten wings
Tiara’s sparkling, you know what that means
It’s no surprise to any eyes who have seen
Someone shoot for the moon and miss
Stricken with courage from a lion’s kiss
Sailing on storms of bliss
Suspended in a bubble
Inside a tide of rubble
On sound-studded lightening lit clouds
Looming long and rumbling loud

Oh beautiful America
Your makeup is smeared
Is that oil on your face
Or foreign orphan’s tears?

Oh the buzzing in the crowd
As miss high and flighty tumbles
Wings mangled but head unbowed
Tresses tangled in her soiled shroud
Misguided expeditions endowed
With the force of the humbled
And the curse of the proud

Oh beautiful America
Your makeup is smeared
Is that oil on your face
Or foreign orphan’s tears?

She struts upon stage for an hour
Wrapped in flags and flanked by tanks
Giddy with glory and drunk on power
Under the thumb of plutocratic banks
A noble enough experiment
But what has become self-evident
Is that she’s heading for a fall
Because America promised freedom for all
In the form of worldwide shopping malls
Pearls before swine, they’re mine all mine
The call of an Empire in steep decline

Oh beautiful America
Your makeup is smeared
Is that oil on your face
Or foreign orphan’s tears?