Here’s a sardonic little homage to America the Beautiful—filtered through the ink-stained ritual of morning newspapers, and the cognitive dissonance they often deliver. A play on words, a nod to old glory, and a wink to the absurdity of it all:
America the Dutiful
(a morning ode to the daily paper)
O paper gray, with headlines splayed,
By porchlight dim and dew,
Thy pages curled, thy truth unfurled,
In font both bold and skewed.
America! America!
God shed his ink on thee—
And crown thy news with half-spun views
From sea to dying sea.
O fragile print, thy coffee tint,
Stains palms like guilty pleas,
Where crossword clues and warfront news
Are folded with unease.
Democracy! Hypocrisy!
Thy op-eds blur the line—
Between the facts, the sponsored hacks,
And horoscopes divine.
Let morning light dispel the blight
Of late-night pundit spats,
And comics grin as markets spin
Like tinfoil-hatted stats.
America! So legible—
Thy headlines scream and sigh,
While classifieds sell dreams that died
Before the ink was dry.