Birds With Two Right Wings by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

This is an image of how someone feels about their government in their country. Just as Lawrence Ferlinghetti felt in a poem he wrote called Birds With Two Right Wings.


Bird With Two Right Wings by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

And now our government

a bird with two right wings

flies on from zone to zone

while we go on having our little fun & games

at each election

as if it really mattered who the pilot is

of Air Force One

(They're interchangeable, stupid!)

While this bird with two right wings

flies right on with its corporate flight crew

And this year its the Great Movie Cowboy in the cockpit

And next year its the great Bush pilot

And now its the Chameleon Kid

and he keeps changing the logo on his captains cap

and now its a donkey and now an elephant

and now some kind of donkephant

And now we recognize two of the crew

who took out a contract on America

and one is a certain gringo wretch

who's busy monkeywrenching

crucial parts of the engine

and its life-support systems

and they got a big fat hose

to siphon off the fuel to privatized tanks

And all the while we just sit there

in the passenger seats

without parachutes

listening to all the news that's fit to air

over the one-way PA system

about how the contract on America

is really good for us etcetera

As all the while the plane lumbers on

into its postmodern

manifest destiny 

Birds With Two Right Wings

Throughout this poem it is evident that Ferlinghetti isn’t satisfied with the American government at the time, this idea is reoccurring within his numerous political poems. The main theme that is illustrated in the text above, is that the democratic and republican parties are both right wings, therefore it does not matter who is in charge, the country will operate the same order either way.  In shorter terms, The United States future only has one direction and Lawrence Ferlinghetti believes that direction is south.