Do you remember when you were a kid
there used to be a man
who would stick it to the bad guys
and save the day for the rest of us?
Blue body suit and blue eyes,
the true blue hero who came from the sky.
Red cape howling courage in the wind,
red S saving the world.
And the bright yellow belt
was the love that held this superhero together.
But Superman, where are you now?
You’re not flying around
to save children on school buses anymore.
The only thing children see flying these days
are the bullets shattering their classrooms,
and I never saw you take a bullet
for one of them.
Superman, where are you now?
They say that you uphold
the American Way.
Does that include the School of the Americas?
Or did Truth and Justice turn their heads
while we taught terrorists
how to torture the innocent?
Superman, where are you now?
Lex Luther has been replaced
by an army of corporate executives,
and the multinational corporations
are rabid dogs leaping over one another
to consume third-world children
and manufacture American desire
for a useless product.
Superman, where are you now?
We’re not threatened by some giant meteor,
But old-growth redwoods tumble like dominoes,
And as life on Earth is slashed into fragments,
Pacific Lumber and Maxxam are aiming to kill.
Where were you while Gypsie’s body
Lay shattered in the dirt?
I see the scarred blacktop sprawl you left behind,
and through a smog of tears
I wonder where the Man of Steel has gone.
The children, the innocent, the poor, the world
all turn their eyes to the heavens
for some sign of hope.
Look! Up in the sky!
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…
the Goodyear Blimp.