Just Like Us
a diss poem, after Kendrick Lamar
It’s a fantasy land the J6ers are shilling
It’s a magical place Elvis is back in the building
The wizard behind the curtain running the show
is firing up the capital—Oz 2.0
With a wave of his wand—the Executive Order
violent rioters pardoned more troops to the border
They tryna throw birthright citizens under the bus
Must be San Andreas fault Don’t look at us
For the suckers who dream they was hired for loyalty
preferred color is green—you gotta pay out some royalties
You better keep practicing taking the knee
‘cause he target shooting enemies like in a gallery
Putting America First means living high off the hog
unless you mouthed off a little too left-leaning
then you’ll get kicked to the curb like a junkyard dog
Too many pigs for the teats so they doing house cleaning
Because they don’t like us
(immigrants, queers, Hispanics, women, and blacks)
They don’t like us
Hold back wetbacks low tax rollbacks
kickback greenbacks no vax or blowback
Canada, Panama, Greenland, Gaza, Roe v. Wade
Manifest Destiny redux? Yeah, be very afraid
Greenhouse gas emissions teflon Paris Agreement
Suck this like a peppermint convictions, impeachments
How can some diss the rules ply the Art of the Con
The reason laws don’t stick? I could give you a $billion
The Supreme Court’s his achievement they were heaven-sent
since he’s hell-bent on reversing what you thought made sense
The candy store’s open There’s no one left gonna lock it
when you’ve got friendly judges in your back pocket
Now that goose-stepping’s come back into fashion
cozy billionaires be jonesing for pull with a passion
I hope y’all be scoping out how this shit got so throwed
‘cause they marching us again down the yellow brick road
Once it comes down to wondering who you should thank
for the lick and a promise (Take that to the bank!)
and you find him acting more and more like Damien
quit your fucking bitching ‘cause you voted him in
So he must be just like us (Say what?)
This government must be just like us (Ayy, what?)
They just like us
Vernita Hall is the author of Where William Walked: Poems About Philadelphia and Its People of Color, winner of the Willow Books Grand Prize and Marsh Hawk Press Robert Creeley Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, African American Review, Barrow Street, The Common, River Styx, Solstice, The Hopkins Review, Arts & Letters, and elsewhere.
Read more Letters to America in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance and Democracy, published by Trinity University Press in collaboration with Terrain.org.
Header photo courtesy Pixabay.
