The header for the United States Declaration of Independence, signed 250 years ago. Somehow, we’re still dealing with a wannabe king and similar issues.

The Semiquincentennial Blues

We heard from the great poet, Gil Scott-Heron, fifty years ago on the occasion of America’s 200th birthday. He gave the world a lesson about the blues and he called it the Bicentennial Blues. I’ve assigned myself the task of providing an update to the situation on America’s 250th birthday, its semiquincentennial. So, now I humbly present my version of the Semiquincentennial Blues.

Scott-Heron passionately taught us that America invented the blues and that America is home to the blues.

Now I can tell you that the blues still has a home here.

America kept that blues atmosphere.

The blues remains at home

And yet it has grown.

It’s still American as apple pie

And Gil Scott-Heron taught us why

America keeps providing the atmosphere

A culture of oppression

A culture of injustice

A culture of fear

But the blues kept goin’

And the blues kept growin’

The blues got married

The blues had babies

The blues got carried

Coming from people who were property

To people living in poverty

The blues got carried

By Hendrix, by Cobain

By Muddy Waters and B.B. King

In the hood they became a new thing

Rapped by Tupac and G. Love and the Special Sauce

The blues kept goin’, it could not stop

It jumped across the pond with The Rolling Stones

Around the world finding new homes

Got remixed into E.D.M. grooves

Rolled into rock

And country, too

The blues has grown

America, have you?

You can still see the parallel lines

Tracing the blues and the evolution of this country

From 1776 to January 6th

From the supposed American Dream to the alleged “welfare queens”

The blues kept goin’, but not so much its home

The blues has a home but the home still needs the blues

So it’s another anniversary

The semiquincentennial year

And it’s a Semiquincentennial Blues

America still has the blues, the new edition

The Semiquincentennial blue edition

For some a year of history

For some a year of misery

It’s a blues year

Still getting ripped off

250 years ago this evening

250 years ago last evening

And what about now?

The blues is still living now

The blues kept going but the country stopped

The blues remembered, the country forgot

Getting hired, fired, promoted, demoted

By the mannerism of the algorithm

Numbed and dumbed by social media

Tik Tok goes the clock while our kids’ brains rot

Still getting goosed by a conniving VP

A wannabe leader named J.D.

Gouged by predatory corporations

So goes the history of this supposedly great nation

A semiquincentennial year

The year we have the White House

Transformed into a fight house

And a big hole in the ground

An aspiring king tore half down

So the public en masse is still numbed

Into being semi-impressed

Or semi-depressed

I fall into the latter category

It’s another blues year

And America still has got the blues

Still deifying the slave-owning Sons of Liberty

While our nation still isn’t totally free

We’ve had a quarter millennium here

Of this blues atmosphere

A quarter millennium of racism

A quarter millennium of sexism

Of xenophobia, homophobia

Of hypocrisy, of fear

The semiquincentennial’s

Just another semi-free year

The truth is that we still ain’t seeing the show

We claim that this country is turning the big two five oh

But oh no

In terms of freedom that just ain’t so

For you see

For much of America, all America wasn’t free

A three-fifths person in 1853, he wasn’t free

And even in 1963, Jim Crow said no

So you see, throughout our semiquicentennial history,

We were only halfway, only semi-free

A woman chained to a bad marriage

Even if she had a horse, a mansion, or a carriage

She wasn’t free to be, to think, to breathe

To vote how she believed

And two men or two women couldn’t love who they loved

Or get married, or provide loving homes for babies

Because of who their lover was

Others couldn’t be the same outside

As they truly were inside and were forced to hide

So we could say America was only alive in 1865

Or only free in 1920 or maybe even 1965

Or with Obergefell in Twenty Fifteen

Or maybe we’re still not all the way free

But don’t tell Mr. John Roberts

Mr. No Balls and All Strikes

Calls it like he sees it

But he sees it like he wants it to be

So we’ve got Citizens United

Keeping us divided

Enslaved to the donors

Eyeballs glazing over,

Staring at ads on our phones and TVs

And we’ve got Mitch McConnell

Mr. Turtle Man

A creature with no principles

Except take what he can

And the rest be damned

Stealing a couple of Supreme Court seats

Which is basically his only feat

And we pay the price out in the streets

We’ve got “Slick Willie” Clinton

Mr. Cigar Man

Triangulating his way to impeachment

And the Contract on America, the GOP hit job

While Willie’s getting a different job

In the Oval Office

Though we got a Black man

Mr. No Drama Obama

After Dubya led us into a pointless war

We got a Convicted Felon who put us into one more

Iran, Iraq, it doesn’t matter who we attack

We just want that oil

We did get Obamacare

Then COVID showed us so much trauma there

We have wars, pandemics, climate change

Social media outrage after social media outrage

The country got nickeled

The country got dimed

Apparently corruption’s no longer a crime

So the blues remains hunting, keeps looking for justice

It’s a blues year for justice

It’s a blues year for the families

Of Uvalde, of Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Parkland

And too many, too many, too many more

It’s a blues year

From Minneapolis to Ferguson to Pittsburgh to Baltimore

In Breonna’s apartment and Trayvon’s neighborhood

It’s a blues year

All across this country wherever people still aren’t free

They’re still looking for justice

And finding semi-justice, which is no justice at all

In this semiquincentennial blues year

Now you might have read all this criticism

But don’t get it twisted

I still love America

It’s just that I miss it

And wish we could fix it

We’ve all missed it

Missed the mark

Missed our chances

Missed our ability to truly be

Free

So America still has the blues

The semiquincentennial blues

Still out on the streets, fighting against wannabe kings

Still protesting the same things

Searching for liberty

Demanding equality

Crying out for justice

After 250 years

Of blood, sweat, and tears

America somehow still has the no kings blues

So now that we know why America is blue

Comes the big question

What will you do?