One of My Favorite Characters Is Often Heard To say: "Everyone Counts, or No One Counts."

That's pretty much the sentiment that this country was founded upon. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Sad then, that these words, written 163 years ago, are still true for a large swath of our own citizens.

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Join me, please, in trying to move our country closer to those ideals espoused in our Constitution.
 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Please

- Yusef Komunyakaa

Forgive me, soldier.

Forgive my right hand   

for pointing you   

to the flawless

tree line now

outlined in my brain.   

There was so much   

bloodsky at daybreak

in Pleiku, but I won’t say

those infernal guns   

blinded me on that hill.

Mistakes piled up men like clouds   

pushed to the dark side.

Sometimes I try to retrace

them, running

fingers down the map

telling less than a woman’s body—

we followed the grid coordinates

in some battalion commander’s mind.   

If I could make my mouth

unsay those orders,

I’d holler: Don’t

move a muscle. Stay put,

keep your fucking head

down, soldier.

Ambush. Gutsmoke.

Last night while making love

I cried out, Hit the dirt!

I’ve tried to swallow my tongue.

You were a greenhorn, so fearless,   

even foolish, & when I said go,

Henry, you went dancing on a red string   

of bullets from that tree line

as it moved from a low cloud.

from: Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems. Copyright 2001.