breathe

(inspired by american oxygen, rihanna)

what are we?
who are you?

a mormon
a singer
babysitter
step sibling
rich kid

 an american

well they say you can be anything at all in America

is there something in this desert air?
is there something that makes us want to single out the fat kids?
breathe in
or become the next nicki minaj
to beat a black boy to death because he was so thirsty he drank from a grey water fountain.
breathe out
to bet your childs birthday fare to settle your own affairs
buy tickets to a game whos teams you dont even follow
breathe in breathe out
to get so drunk that we forget our children's names the next morning when they ask us where we were last night.
to play baseball just to hear your dad say "im proud of you son"

to sing our souls out on broadway
to flood wall street with signs of "let us be" and "we are free"
to become the best footballer you've ever seen on your high school team
to be the next star on the wrecking ball
that makes you want to sweat years worth of blood so you qualify for the olympics
that turns the music up for us while we drive

breathe in. breathe out. 

is there some disease in our apples that makes our apple pie taste more like freedom than sugar?
is there something in the humidity that makes my hair frizz with anger and my heart frizz with halleluiahs. 
that makes british accents wish they had american ones.
i mean we want to be german engineers, but german engineers want to breathe free.
do the trees turn CO2 into freedom and do the bells ring out stars
because i cant catch them.
my lungs cant catch them.

my lungs tell my mind to grab those stars but my mind sends an emailed reply saying
"thanks but we're full"

breathe in. breathe out.
there is something in this air we breathe!
we sweat for a nickel and a dime.
we turned this into an empire.

breathe out. breathe in.
american oxygen.