Thanksgiving Day Prayer

For William Burroughs in hope that he will be remembered.

Thanksgiving Day November 22, 2007

thanks for six years
two months and eleven days
of irrational and exaggerated fear

thanks for color-coding fear
so even the illiterate products
of No Child Left Behind can join in

thanks for wars without objectives
that allow us to commit genocide
without anyone noticing

thanks for Blackwater
and the bullets which tore and ripped
into Muslim women and children

thanks for ignoring the environment

thanks for allowing New Orleans to flood
for letting the waters of the Gulf and Lake Pontchartrain
wash away the poor and their problems

thanks for the debt
for mortgaging our country to China

thanks for the lead-based paint
that ensures our children won't be alive
to repay that debt

"thanks for the last and greatest betrayal
of the last and greatest of human dreams"