Tony Hoagland: I am asleep in America too

America

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
says America is for him a maximum security prison whose walls

are made of Radio Shacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
where you can't tell the show from the commercials;

and as I contemplate how full of shit I think he is,
he says that even when he's driving to the mall in his Isuzu

trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
like a boiling jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds
of the thick satin quilt of America.

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
or whether he is just spin-doctoring a better grade,

and then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,
it was not blood but money

that gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
spilling from his wounds, and, this is the funny part,

he gasped, "Thank God-- those Ben Franklins were
clogging up my heart--

and so I perish happily,
freed from that which kept me from my liberty--"

which is when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
would never speak in rhymed couplets

and I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes
and I think, "I am asleep in America too,

and I don't know how to wake myself either"
and I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

"I was listening to the cries of the past,
when I should have been listening to the cries of the future"

but how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
or what kind of nightmare it might be

when each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
and you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

even while others are drowning underneath you
and you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

and yet it seems to be your own hand
which turns the volume higher?

    --Tony Hoagland (1953-), author of (among others) Hard Rain and What Narcissism Means to Me

Comments

[Rob]

Hello my American,

The students with blue hair and a tongue stud says America is a prison. Then why doesn't he take his blue hair and tongue stud to another country and watch it get ripped from his mouth.

There are a lot of people in the world that wish they didn't have to walk miles with a bucket on there head, so they can get water from a well.

There are a lot of people who wish they had the freedom to wear blue, hair, or to have earings in the mouth. In a lot of countries that would get your butt kicked and thrown in prison. Even if you didn't end up in jail, you'd still get you butt kicked.

You have cable TV, what the hell are you complaining about. Most people in the world, will NEVER have cable. Enjoy what you have. Enjoy your freedom. If you don't want 100 channels then, don't get it. What the hell are you complaining for.

Be happy that you have a Radio Shack. If you don't like MTV, MC Donalds, Burger King, then don't go there idiot.

I come from a 3rd world country and I am greatfull that I live in America. What angers me the most is how stupid Americans will always bitchh and complain about how bad this country is.

I tell them IDIOTS. Go to my country. And that SHUTS them up really quick........

I wasn't born in America, but I grew up here. And it makes me sick because a lot of YOU complain. You have more freedoms and choices than any place in the world. Instead of enjoying IT. You guys, COMPLAIN.

Instead of ENJOYING what you have and being thankful. You COMPLAIN. Complain.. Complain.. Complain.. If America is such a prison, then goto Haiti, Cuba, Pakistan, China and see how much freedom you got.

Running water, a stable political system, a place where you wouldn't get shot on the spot for disagreeing with the your leader.

Being able to goto Burger King (I love it). Being able to watch my favorite artist on MTV (I love it). Having the freedom to wear what I want and dress how I want is freedom and I love it.

That IDIOT SHOULD Be thankful HIS AZZ can drive, without being blown up by a bomb. Or being attacked by machine gun fire, because your president has just been killed and now your in a civil war.

If you want to experience what a nightmare is truly is then, why don't you take your STUPID IGNORANT SELF somewhere else and see what a nightmare is truly is... You never EVEN lived outside of this country. Your just a spoiled BRAT COMPLAING....

It's easy to criticize and complain instead of looking into the hearts of others. Because calling somebody ghetto and phony, shows what kind of person you really are, it takes one to know one!

You rant about money... There are a lot of people in this world that wish they could make money. Wish they weren't stuck in a caste system like INDIA or wish they weren't living in a class system like MOST of the world.

People that wish they could rise out of poverty and make something of themselves. I wonder are you some rich snooty person who looks down at people because they are different.

And look down at others because THEY MAKE YOU FEEL superior???

You WHINE about shopping malls and driving in your car across America, how many people in the world wish they could afford a car. Wish they could simply go down the store to get the goods that they need.

[Sedulia]

Rob, this is a poem, not a blog post. The poet thinks the kid with the blue hair, who is a student in the poet's class, is ridiculous-- did you understand that? Maybe it's hard to read poetry in a language that is not your native tongue.

You are right that many people in this country don't appreciate what they have.

But why do you assume the people in the poem have bad motives? They have had very different life experiences from you. (Let's see how your own children turn out.) They are not looking down on anyone. They are saying that money is not all it takes to be happy.

The last lines in the poem describe how it seems wrong to "float in your pleasure boat" on this river of consumer abundance when "others are drowning." Don't you agree with that?

[wally]

rob is completley right and i am from here and i got the exact interpretation that rob got and literally he took the words out of my mouth.

[Lee]

i read this poem in my class couple weeks ago. the more i read it the more i realize we *are* pushing people down to get are needs i see it in school all the time. plus im one being pushed down

[Disillusioned Person]

fools believe that they are free in the midst of loosing more freedoms!

[Sedulia]

"Losing." It's spelled "losing."