(This was written in response to a post about poems.  For those who missed it, I repost it here:)

In arabic and persian, I want to rite out: America, is the hope of the world.
The schoolhouses, domes and pillars are defaced by such slogans. All men created such and such. Life, liberty, and something else.
In America, my Jewish son, my Catholic, and my Shinto father can all be treated the same by the state, or at least in theory. My atheist brother won't be stoned in the street. My wife won't be turned on the wheel for heresy. And I won't be removed from my lands--at least not anymore...
I hate the debate but I love the fight for a place we think or deem or posture to be, like chipping away at a hunk of wood--trying to find the right design; the hidden truth. Always aspiring to be something. America, what, I wonder is your truth?
I love NY. I love our flag. I have many. I pray for it, not to it.
I think if a mosque were built on top of a skyscraper shaped like a titanic American flag, it would only show our greatness, and our tolerance for diversity. If the crescent moon was atop Freedom Tower, I would not reel in disgust, but be proud of how far we've come. If a muslim was elected President, then Martin Luther King's dream would be closer to fruition.
What better place than NY for the terrorists to have struck a nerve in us, America. For we all suffered, christian, buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, and nihilist. We all grieved. We all were struck. All on the same block.
I don't care what they call a mosque, or it's location. Just as I don't mind a church, or where I may find it. Because I know what it is for.
As long as we don't have to finance the construction, nor have to attend by force, nor are told that we will pray to God, or Allah, or Jehovah, I will demonstrate my love for America by loving it's people, it's religions, it's languages, it's faces, it's colors--the way you may love cigarettes, and sex, and sleep, and children. Only the past can hate a mosque, the way it hated the Sioux, the African, the Afro-American. King George's rule.
Are we tending towards Shickelgruber, or are we tending towards Lincoln? I implore you America, with your modern convenience gadgets and such, to make a place for kindness, and for everyone. Even those you despise. Even those you hate with passion. I assure you that they are like those brothers and sisters we hated growing up, and yet would stick up for in a fight. Would go tell Mom on, but would also hug at a funeral, and kiss at a wedding, and we would adore their children.
Oh, lets talk of dreams. In the way dreams really are, Mr. King. One day a dream to see the staff at Pearl Harbor be Japanese uniforms and eastern descent. To see the great-great-great granddaughter of John Wilkes Booth open a museum to Father Abraham. To see rappers with a confederate flag. To see white skin-heads the founders and trustees of a Malcolm X university. Germans running a holocaust memorial.
Then, a Barack Obama would be ho hum. A Sarah Palin would be so what. A holacaust and a slavery and a cold war would be fairy tales that scared nobody, and flew away in the wind. All on one sidewalk. Only in America, would this not be a ludicrous fantasy.
Would you object to a cross? Would I object to a Cathedral?
Be better than your worst, America. That blood minged on the sidewalk ten years before, on that one block. Orthadox Jew, Muslim, Jesus Christ. It is still stuck in the caked crevaces of the concrete of Lower Manhattan.
Be better than Lincoln. Make Martin Luther King Jr. seem even more visionary. Bend yourself towards justice. Be the change you wish for in your dreams.
A muslim, a Jew, a Christian--they are your brother, your mother, yourself. See yourself in them, and them in you. Can you cast out yourself? Can you cut off your own leg? Can you hate yourself?
Be America. Be it in the way you look different, say it loud, and sing in tongues.
I admit that I'd love to see NY as a Jerusalem. I sometimes do already. The men hiding in caves and 19 men with planes would have loved to force a Christian church out of Jerusalem, out of Rome, out of Paris, out of Manhattan.
That is a greater victory to them than the Eiffel tower, the Statue of Liberty.
What is your victory, I wonder? Is it just a building, some pretty columns with slogans? Is that all we can dream of?
America, you don't seem to know that you are greatest when you are magnanimous.
Mother, father, brother--O' my eye is searching for justice, my ear is pressed to brotherood. America seems to ignore me. America, at times you seem blind.
As the world is always listening, and watching.
I pray for the children, especially the ones we ignore. Cast aside. Treat like a one-legged stepchild. The ones we hate, we probably still smile at the children. What are you saying to them, America? What is your truth?
Is it in your words, or is it the way you fear a building, full of Americans.