Dear John: A Canadian Breakup Letter to America
I loved you once.
In truth, yes, it was always a little love-hate.
You, my big brother, you were always brave and smart and sometimes mean.
And maybe, you were not always as smart as you thought you were.
We never really loved your football captains and your pom-pom cheerleaders;
We indulged your fantasy and laughed a little,
but we loved you nonetheless.
Your northern neighbours, we laughed at Yosemite Sam.
Gun-totin’, frenetic and red-faced.
You laughed too.
Back then you were still able to laugh at yourselves.
There was romance too.
We dreamt of autumn in New York, with its elegant old bars,
polished mahogany and high ceilings.
On my first trip there, I learned to love olives.
Sipping martinis,
swinging a silk stockinged leg on a bar stool.
Intelligent conversation with an attractive man.
Dave Brubeck in dark corners.
You were
the world series winner of sophistication.
Oh so grown-up.
It was every aspiring writer’s dream to move
to New York;
there lay the possibility of escape from banality,
from the suburban strait jacket of your dream.
That dream, Willy Loman’s dream,
the American dream.
New York was the self-talk that kept you a little humble,
Oh land of the free.
The beatniks poking around the flickering flames of manifest destiny,
that project that held the seeds of your self-destruction.
Salinger knew. Seymour Glass knew.
They feared your shadow.
Meanwhile I longed for the snowy streets of Manhattan
and the beauty of shared minds.
I spent Christmas at the Chelsea Hotel once;
it was a ruined temple by then,
holding the glory of drunk poets and songwriters
and the guts and gore of death.
A place to worship original thinkers;
electric creativity fed crazy geniuses
and all innovation change and chaos were possible.
We scurried to the corner store for presto logs
— you could burn them in the fireplaces in the rooms —
a certain fire hazard but a moment of romance.
And there my first sighting of a New York cockroach,
scurrying under the bath as I collected the water glasses to hold our wine.
It set my mind on fire,
like no other
place in the world
could.
Those beloved New York thinkers
were your shadow witnesses,
buried under the weight of their footnotes,
lost in their explanations of explanations.
They pioneered west to find themselves in their bodies.
They arrived at Big Sur;
we all cheered at the chance to find ourselves;
for you to find yourselves.
You showed us the way.
We were right there on the road with Jack,
and we were with you on Ken’s bus
streaming our consciousness on the road to discovery.
You were so good at renewal
invention and reinvention.
We had always seen your shadow.
Maybe we saw it before you did.
Bodies swaying on a sweltering night,
hoods made out of kitchen sheets.
Ghouls with torches.
Good men goaded into lynching.
The smell of sweat laced with fear and hatred.
We saw your moment of courage;
you confronted yourselves.
We walked with you in Montgomery.
Then he spoke.
And once again you had a dream;
We shared that dream.
That creed,
sweet land of liberty.
We agreed that
America could only be great
when it stood up for freedom.
And then you shot him.
But you didn’t kill his dream.
Your youth carried it, and they stopped that sick war.
We sheltered your pacifists in our northern woods.
And some of us, we believed in you again.
And some of us dreamt of peace and love,
and the dawning of the age of Aquarius.
As the rainbows dispersed we knew that
feathers and doves were no match for
the greedy appetites of the powerful.
And that the rot was still there.
Your shadow self still hiding,
the miasma forming while
good Christian men held purity balls for their daughters
and then raped the daughters of other fathers.
On Epstein’s island.
Self-proclaimed moral men.
Always lying.
Always lying.
Oh America.
Your shit has always stunk.
We’re sick of your violence and your guns,
your bullying, your ignorance,
your greed, and your corruption.
In the end, you have become your shadow,
lust and power unchecked,
vomiting up
the orange monster.
And in his bile,
the botoxed bootlickers who do his bidding.
Your self destruction is complete.
You can never be great again.
So it’s over.
The shadow has killed the dream.
The lying, the raping, the killing.
The pedophile president.
It can never be unseen.
It can never be undone.
You have destroyed
yourselves
and any faith
we ever had in you.
And so now,
you will understand,
if you see us on the street,
know that
we will
walk on by.
