The town of Arizona’s got our number, and if it don’t match theirs,
we might as well string our stars and stripes to the eagle flying,
and sing songs about the land of the free and the home of debts paid,
because we’ve been brushing up on our economics, keeping current,
and we know now that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
We can either return our earnings to keep pedaling the business cycle,
Or tie them to lampposts on Wall Street and hope to reinvent electricity.
In Arizona, it’s another story. Remember when Honest Abe freed the slaves,
And most of them were relegated to working the same crops but with pay?
All the immigrants who built the damn place with their own damn hands
are being told that men are only created equal if created in our factories.
There’s too little outrage in this world, the emphases all in the wrong place,
like learning a new language. If you don’t speak tech jargon, you’ll be next
in line for deportation. I never thought there could be a place that celebrated
its independence from the Garden of Eden, even created
a computer that can pinpoint exactly where the garden would have been,
so we can fly their on the memories of our fallen ancestors,
and if we’re worried about the contradiction, we can sleep
knowing that if it isn’t human, it doesn’t rate. And when we get there,
if we stop to look away from the captivation of a network
with more Gs than our bank accounts, we’ll look at each other,
then back at the field, then off into the distance, like we’re thinking
so deeply that we can’t connect to each other, but the truth
is that we can’t connect to the field, because it isn’t anything anymore,
just another reminder of the way we think the world spins too fast
and nice guys finish last. We reflect on this fact, and build from there,
and then, can we really argue with the divinity of the field
when, in its stillness, it inspired us still? When we hop on the memories
to fly back home, conceiving of no other way without complications,
we rise above the birds and the clouds, never taking the time
to truly take in the feeling of flying closer to the heavens
than anyone ever imagined—before we started gutting our planet
for resources to burn to take us further than fossil fuels can forge.
If that’s not the definition of eating the apple, I’ll change my name
to Arizona, move to Mexico, and open up a photo-hut near the border
with a banner that reads, “So close, you’ll think you’re really there!”