Unknown but Checked

Everyone's a hypocrite. At least in the end.
I remember them screaming "America!" at the same moment they flew the Stars and Bars. I remember them crying "Traitor!" at the First Amendment.
But we still have a democracy--as long as we can keep it? It's slipping. It's slipping, sliding, like the salamanders of Whitemarsh Island, of the marshes and the humid, sickly, swamps of the thriving South.

Oh, they will win the war, rise again. I see it now. I saw it then--through the eyes of a child--almost comprehending the chants, vibrating through my skull along the heat.

Stones.
I remember stones.
And the chant, too.
"Jew! Jew! Jew!"
And the stones because of the Jew.
And the stones because of the Jew.
But I don't know the stereotypes--still, today.
I don't understand the difference--or why.

But it's all caught up in the Southern heat and my memory buckles to its own defeat and their hate and their hate and their hate.

And I remember--it's never too late for the black-white blank slate--the racial bait that spits and tears.

But they're winning the war--faces grinning, muscles sore.

Creep on-Creep off.

And the stones bombard my bones for the quick-fix death of my race
-your race
-And the Stars entangling Bars erase my face.

The stones don't get it--
The bones don't get it--
The laughing, throwing hands don't get it.
So humanity remains disgraced.
End it.
We will.
In the Alley of Finale because never never never never
does hate abate.