Americana

I often take photos of trains or rails and I worry that an incorrect message may be conveyed, I usually see trains being ascribed with a theme of freedom, or fresh air. This is not my intention and in no way how trains are viewed from my perspective. I see trains as a great symbol of oppression and little else.

I think that when Americans started building towns around railroads instead of rivers
We became forever dependent on the federal government and
The United States government has already used the railroad as a weapon of mass destruction towards her own people
(If you’d compare the gatling gun to a nuclear bomb and a bunch of hillbilly rebels to the Japanese empire.)
The Nazis used their trains in attempt to reorganize or kill most of Europe and then they inspired our highway design.
Our transcontinental system of rails became a lifeline instantly for farmers and the military but, still
The cars are usually empty; it’s effectively a fuel pipeline these days so, on the wrong day
A train horn sounds threatening.

If you watch movies or love Americana, the railroad system may seem like a fun way to travel,
that was in the old days
that was when supermen were real, and families went on “Holiday”
We used unironically the words: baloney, hullabaloo, and malarkey, in a rage.
While the railcar taught us harmony
The trains spread like a disease.

The Automobile taught us Americans how in the middle east
These wizards hoard gold in the sand under their dirty feet
and we can use fire to turn their floor into a glass ceiling
Call it operation: fill up the jeep
Burning greed in a hazy dust of confusion while body parts scatter like fairy rings
In red sand
An inconvenient sticky muck at the end of a little tiny
lifeless hand.

Do you like Americana? Do you call it art?
Do you pretend you see pretty things in the clouds
Did you really believe that this land
was ours?
Do you understand now how
we come from cattle thieves who drove the buffalo into extinction
and all of our milk is sour.

The Buffalo is described as a Godly creature
The American is not.

We should smelt every railroad tie in the country and build us the biggest guillotine the english have ever seen, at every junction we’ll plant flowers and in every ghost town we create
we’ll build a water tower.

Call it a revolution
Call it horsepower.
Call it revenge, for all the redskins we made cower
every mick and chink blown to bits from faulty TNT
I think big train engines are just so fascinating
for so many different reasons.