USA, 5 July

First day back
Since Fourth of July
Fireworks and fireflies
Red, white, and blue
Ice cream sandwich blinders
Block the peripheral celebration

Of celebrating
A white country on a black back
Crowds of revelers blinded
by the heat of a DC July
Red, white, and blue
Deafened by the fireworks

Some peoples’ lives are on fire
As tourists sway and celebrate
Waving red white and blue
Forgetting to look back
at 1919, 1862, 1776 4 July
A patriotic white mask blinds

The older immigrants, blind
For generations to the firearms
In their hearts. July
Is a celebration
Only for the overdogs, committed to taking back
Their red, White, and blue

Guise of know-how, blew
Away their sight,
Stabbing their national peace in the back,
Setting their religion on fire,
Culminating in a hypocritical celebration
Every fourth of July.

Still, we find optimism in the July
Swingin’ blues
A timid celebration
of a future out of sight
yet in some hearts ablaze,
To win freedom back.

We can celebrate when the blind
man gazes into the July red white and blue
and the fireworks send his sight back.