“The Universe” as a Black Hole or America collapsing under its own massive ego

Ameritocracy (&-'mer-&-'tä-kr&-sE): n.
1) a hegemony of American ethnocentricity; a selfishness specific to US.

If a helicopter were to be flown above and around the world, America
would be the overhead rotor blades; not propelling itself to go higher, but instead dragging those beneath it to trail along

And we’re vacuuming
We’re sucking the culture out of the world
Maybe we’re jealous that others aren’t melted, so we attempt to meld them to
McDonald’s
Nike
Gap
If not with the hamburgers, shocks and sweaters,
with the hamburglers, shock and sweat shops.
We tie their shoestrings together and pretend to expect them
to stand on their own two feet
Fully aware that the knot is too tight
and they’ll trip and fall right into our support “system”

Hovering over the pooooooooor countries
that need our help
Our help in extracting the oil from their land
Our help in commercial labor
Our help in nuclear advice
Our help in raising their children
Raising their armies
And raising their flags

Tag:
“Hello, my name is America”

But the underlying message is
“Hello, you will be saved by becoming a mirror-America.
If we’re going to hell, you’re all coming with us.”
Enjoy the freedoms of fast food
Enjoy the freedoms of democracy
Hypo-crazy because
Nothing is the only thing
free
We are bound just as any other
Bound to stereotypes
Bound to government funding
Bound to our TV’s media
Constantly re-bounding from our shots missed
One day a country, not as tall,
but with a higher jump will catch the ball.


What are we here?
A ten tier broken sphere with half working
transient ears
Trolley hop between bridge gaps
Gaping like a baffled man
Grown- an adept, competent person
in disbelief of patterns
the shapes types and masks
projecting out toward
The East
The Other

The disbelief is maddening
like an unconscious comma
placed in the wrong space
in a sentence

His face gapes
Stuck like someone slapped
his back and it became
fixed like that.

Even when he smiles,
his lips are just a crease.
He hates the ease in
which he carries on in a conversation
in a country so broken
Scattered, battered, beaten, persisting in
good/ and bad ways

Is he bad to be so privileged and so lost
like the comma?
No matter which angle he sides with
He is somewhere
to someone, where that somewhere is wrong
to somebody.
What’s right?

United? Divided States of America
into sides
of right wrong
Long short
Retort prompt

Which came first- was it the chicken or the egg?
Was the egg a reaction to the chicken?
Was the chicken a hatching of the egg?
Who started it? “ You started it!”
Who cares!
It persists and we’re all apertures
spewing our intentions
Propositions
But what is resolved?

Ameritocracy is hypocrisy.
A country- each side, every angle
faction wing bloc sector pressure group
camp branch area variable- each one is
conniving & contorting pretension
This belief that his or her values should and will
Be universal
His belief is controversial to the opponent
The opponent’s belief is contentious, as well
Disbelief in the world as a circle
with us as the center.

Where am I going with this?
Where are we going? – when we
have a word specific to our own
Ethnocentricity.
A pathologic propensity to be revolved around,
as opposed to evolving within/amidst, the world.

(This is where the conclusion goes)
Yet there doesn’t seem to be any resolution.
We just let the years pass, decade by decade with
tens of hundreds of New Year’s Resolutions unresolved.

So where’s my solution?
Today I realized that as hypocritical as Ameritocrity is
Amerisocrity is our privilege as poets:
We indulge.
We explore rhetoric and resistance and rebuttals
in our fortunate forum.
Who else can save us?
What else?
Questions that bend at whichever light
that it lends.