Written in 2016 but ever relevant now, I’m sharing this piece on the podcast. To support the continuation of my podcast, please consider supporting at patreon.com/dcolin and remember to sign up for my newsletter at dcolin.com.

Poem text:

When America was great the buffalo in all their glory, proud mammals, must have known that

even then before the West was filled with states that they would at least, at the very least die

with dignity, that every part of them would be used, that it was an honor, that the code, the

circle of life would be honored like the lessons taught to Simba were cross cultural, immune to

race and color and breed, that the land, the connection to it, the music inside the soil would

always sing to the people and the people would hear it. Perhaps now the buffalo are rolling in

their graves if of course there is anything left of their skeletons to roll. But America

America was great once, back when tea bags cast over ships told the British off like a neck roll

and a long sucking of the teeth or maybe that is too colorful a comparison. Maybe it was more

like a two year old tantrum. MINE! MINE! Like a child’s way of ownership, owning things that no

one in their two years of life would know how to own but knew ownership by piercing the word

through the air, MINE! And then destroying it all, if I can’t have it then no one can.

When is it that we learn power? When do we become greedy? When is it that our needs

supersede another’s? How is it that we birth oppression? Does it feed from our own breasts?

Would you call it murder if we decided oppression wasn’t fit to live? To sit next to us at the

table, you know that table that everyone is trying to sit at. Who made that table anyway?

I digress.

America was great. That time when it occupied Haiti. That time when it occupied the Dominican

Republic. That time when it occupied Nicaragua. That time when it occupied Cuba. That time

when it occupied Somalia. That time when it occupied Iraq. That time when it occupied…Wait,

No, America was great during the Civil War, when America was bipolar,

torn between two sides. To nigger or not nigger. Did you think this was about cotton? America

has being mourning over not niggering ever since. America was great when new ways to nigger

were invented.

America was great when Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s mistress, when Sojourner Truth

was still Isabella Baumfree and learned to read and write, when Kunta Kinte didn’t have to

change his name to what was it again?...

America was great when Martin Luther King lived a long life and Malcolm X saved his grandson

from murder after cheating his own death.

Brown v. Board of Education actually meant equal education which meant equally allocated

funds which meant Black neighborhoods matter, I mean All neighborhoods matter. When

America was great, prisons were turned into schools and we became the most educated

country in the world. Two million, one hundred forty-five thousand and one hundred people [1]

were rehabilitated, restored to a normal life in America’s greatness.

When America was great Langston Hughes changed the title of his poem ‘I, Too’ to ‘I Am’

I am America

I am America

I was always America

Right?

So naturally when the president says make America great again

The operative word being again

Because greatness was lost somewhere in America’s history and he’s the one to bring it back

When the president says make America great again

He must be talking about raising the buffalo from the dead. He must be saying give the land

back. He must be honoring the legacy of the Natives. He must be talking about reparations. He

must be talking about time travel. He must be talking about Africans not being imported like a

cash crop. He must be talking about demolishing walls instead of building them. He must be

talking about justice. Social justice. Educational justice. Political justice. Economic justice. He

must be talking about justice. Damn, he must be submitting his resignation.

Right?

Right?

1 This number was taken from www.prisonstudies.org

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