America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
From ‘Let America Be America Again’ By Langston Hughes

(I’m not America though I used to be, but America was never me)
Make it great again. Great at what? Great when?
Maybe the 1960’s, how about then? Segregation, cold wars
Assassinate a president. Oh no, that’s all right then.
When would you like to go back to? 
You let me know when.
Not a time but a way? The way it used to be?
When America was respected, 
a leader of nations and men.
Let America be America again.

("I had a dream. That one day this nation would rise up …" But I’m living it’s nightmare)
Dream on you dreamers. No, not you sleepers.
Not you sleepers who have slept on the atrocities of a once great country;
Those that snore peacefully as the elected Executive stomps through history.
A petulant toddler, upset that he is not given his favorite toy.
Which toy? Whichever one he can see,
Be it green, land, or gold, peace, prizes or war, any toy in the hand of another,
He thinks belongs to him. If I want it it’s mine! It belongs to me! 
A sleeping giant, this land of the free?
Let it be the dream it used to be.

(America discovered in 1492, unless you were here already, but we’re not talking to you)
America used to do things. We were the envy of the globe. We made discoveries.
Pioneers in the sciences, arts and more. The great Western, of civilization;
Complete with cowboy boots and a ten gallon hat.
America used to be … 
They’ll say, as if yesterday was a panacea, and the present pain.
America still is.
Despite the recent dark clouds and dumbing down of society
Through an endless campaign
Let it be the pioneer on the plain

(“America was never America to me”. Though maybe America is more me than it wishes to see.)
There is hope on the horizon, or in the clouds, in the cloud, an AI induced hallucination,
Perhaps in the nation, a female orientation, with male parts, a crazy upstart,
Who dares to dream. Who dares indeed? Dream a little dream, you’ve got to be a little crazy,
To combat the doomscrool, for whom the bell tolls, if you’re going to believe,
That things will get better, can’t get much worse, oh but it can you see,
See it all, from above the clouds, above the cloud, an AI hallucination,
Data center hiccup, energy drain, there it goes again,
The desire to be free, it’s not just me.
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

---

This was for a dVerse prompt: I thought we should revisit a form we had not done together since May 2013 when it was presented to the community by Samuel Peralta. This is the glosa (sometimes gloss or close) that is a poetry that goes back to the Spanish courts of the 14th century. The idea is to use four lines from a famous or well-known poet and expand on the poem keeping it in line with the original poem, and to honor the author.

The form consists of four borrowed lines from your poem (the cabreza)  of choice and four stanzas of ten lines where the last line of each stanza is a line from the cabreza. There is no requirement on the meter other than it should not be too different from the borrowed poem. There is only one other requirement and that is that in the glosa line 6 and 9 should rhyme with the borrowed line. 

I chose a poem from one of my favorite poets, Langston Hughes, ‘Let America Be America Again’. I took a look at some of his famous poems and then I saw this one and thought this was the one. I had forgotten about it until I saw the title and started to read it and was like oh yeah.

In writing this I forgot that the last line had to be from the original and wrote my own last lines (I did the rhyming of lines 6 & 9 in the original) and when posting I saw that the last line had to be from the original and stuck it in. It works but it completely changed the poem. 🤣 I highly suggest you read Langston Hughes’ Let America Be America Again. It’s striking how a poem written in 1935 can have such an impact in 2026.

I also have two quotes in the poem. The first is from Martin Luther King Jr.’s I have a dream speech and the second is the 5th line from Let America Be America Again. The last stanza is a bit of free verse stream of conscious in style.