Leaving America

When I told T.J. I wanted to leave America, he got mad, he said:
“Go have fun in your stinking foreign country with bad plumbing.”

When I told Jeanne I wanted to leave America, she was puzzled, she said:
“Do you really think there’s better country than this one?”

“No,” I said:
“It’s just that this is my fifteen thousand six hundred and eighty third day
of being American,
and yet, somehow, I still don’t feel at home here.”

Of course, it could be true that, wherever I go,
they will make me be an American.

I’m not familiar enough with foreigners to know
if they will let me be something else.
(I’m not familiar enough with myself to know
f I could let myself be something else.)

Even so, it may be that being stuck being an American
in a foreign country will be invigorating,
people will enjoy it when I complain about the plumbing,
they’ll laugh and say:
“that crazy American.”

But I think I would like it better if I could wake up and actually be, say,
Italian, or Greek, for a change.
I haven’t met any Greeks but I read Zorba the Greek, and he seemed to like it.

When I told my mother I wanted to leave America, she said:
“America will miss you,”
and this was a lie, of course,
but a nice one that made me sad to go
even though, as you can see, I haven’t actually left yet.

Before I go I wanted to get up here in front of everyone and say:
no hard feelings, America,
you’ve all been really swell, and I will miss the plumbing.