Wednesday, July 20, 2016

the president of peace

his advisers advise: war is mighty unpopular,
people get squeamish when we bomb children
and play god with governments and of course
their disgust evolves to outrage once they learn
that they're the ones footing the bill.


so he promised peace
lifting the people onto his shoulders
showing them that the horizon line
isn't so far as we'd believed

and the people believed in peace
and the people argued for peace
and the people voted for peace

so the president of peace wins
and is sworn in
and the warmth of peace
perceived fills the body politic
like a soothing serum

then the president goes through
those doors, the doors which
all presidents have passed through,
into the enclave of maps and missions,
where the globe in the center of the room
spins furiously, never stopping,
and the president of peace pausing,
absorbing all, advice and threats receiving,
sees the intelligence gathering,
hears the masses whispering,
on his tongue the taste of bombing,
in his head the sweep of mourning,

yet when the president emerges from the room
you can see in his eyes
that what was promised is slipping,
that our war is perpetually continuing

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

A Mother's Burden

Here is something I want you to hear, white people.
You... are free. But we... are loose.


These are the words of a mother,
whose daughter crossed the sea
to lay down her life
for a wretch like me.

And she's conflicted.

Conflicted that we print the
swim times of the kid who
raped an unconscious girl
behind a dumpster,
but when a black man
is shot for owning a gun
and uhh... well, he looks
a lot like our suspect,
with that wide nose,

we print his record
and mine his lifetime
for proof of his errors
to justify state-sanctioned
execution.

Which is another way to say,
we comb for clues to their humanity
so that we may fully dehumanize
the dead.

So yes, she is conflicted.

She puts her life second
below the nebulous crib of country
and risks for
all names, sorts, types, tracks,
all religions and notions, occupations,
all strata, all shades, all distortions.
Though they call the same place home,
she comes home conflicted.

Majored in psychology,
been serving overseas,
and still I can feel that 

they hate me.

And in the supermarkets they follow me.
And in their homes they chastise me.
And at traffic stops they are allowed
to kill me.

That confliction, I cannot grasp,
laying your life down for folks
who can't look past your skin,
while somehow still refusing to see it.

I have not wrung this out
to counter guilt, or feel better about it,
though I'm not convinced that
writing is ever anything else.

I am sharing a story of a woman whose name I missed,
who spoke with the strength I know comes from
living and battling a life that I could never measure,
about her selfless daughter who could someday
die for us conflicted.

Sunday, July 3, 2016

and some, i assume, are good players

A racist has entered the game
and there is no counter-play

except to tilt, tilt, tilt
the screen from your humanity.

The bastard plasters obscenities
and loathes Peru in particular.

[insert furiously typed diatribe]

[a copy-pasted hate sermon]

Dude, what did Peru do to you?
Did it steal your determination?

Did it ruin your white life?
Ah, we will never play again,

but it comforts me to think
of you in the brooding dark,

brow contorted, slick fingers
flying over the keys,

squinting through the fog
of war, counting your enemies.

You make nine of them each game.
Your world is getting smaller.

And wouldn't it be nice, you think,
if the river was ten feet taller.