November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 2

For today’s prompt, use an epigraph to kickstart your poem. That is, use a quotation. You can use a favorite of your own, or if you’re having trouble thinking of one, I’ve provided a few below. To format an epigraph poem, a poet places the quotation between the title and the body of the poem, while also giving credit to the source of
the quotation.

Needing It Back

Quotation: From Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States, whose birthday is today: "America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration."

I've lost it--we all have.
That amazing thing we cherished
But didn't know enough
To hold on to--

That feeling of privilege,
That knowledge of rightness,
That starry-eyed gaze
Into spacious skies.

Fields of amber grain
Aren't feeding our homeless,
And our purple mountain majesties
Are blocking immigrants.

I remember singing it,
I remember feeling it,
That brotherhood
From sea to shining sea...

But it's gone now.
We have protestors
Being tear-gassed
And homes foreclosed for one dollar.

We have the 99 per cent
Losing hope, losing health,
Losing jobs, losing everything...
We want it all back.

I want to love my country.
I want to trust my government.
I want to once again live
In America the Beautiful.

Listen to Mr. Harding.
Not heroics, but healing;
Not nostrums, but normalcy;
Not revolution, but restoration.

I am the one per cent.
I am lonely, scared kitteh...
Plz, I can haz America back?
K thx bye...