PodPoet: Is This My Country?

The PodPoet calls in to record a poem entitled "Is This My Country?" Here is the text for those of you who cannot access the podcast:

City of my joy, city of my dreams
Under water and forgotten
Corpses floating by
Babies dying
Young and old blacks, old whites

That could be my grandmother
Dead in her wheelchair
Or my brother’s corpse
Floating in the water

My President is bragging about his war
Surrounded by white-clad sailors
Spending the night in the white Hotel del Coronado
While blacks, mostly blacks
Suffer and die

The aid trickles in
More die by the hour
Donate to the Red Cross
I do so but feel worthless nonetheless

It is not what I can or cannot do
Do or do not do
That would save those people

It is what my society
My government
My leaders
Are able to do

They disappoint me
And I am ashamed
Of the government
Of the society
I call my own
And am part of
And am at least in part responsible for

I’ll become better than that
And settle for nothing less
From those who lead me

Goodbye New Orleans
I’ll see you again on the other side of this nightmare