Imagined Nation

05/29/06

Call it what you want
the placating drone of monotonous voices,
of repeat and repeat and repeat,
rhetoric replete like cascading tomes of
hate hate hate

Call it what you want
a war, a slaughter, an invasion
of persuasion, a coercive
combination of minds that bend
for more to blood to spend
an empty recitation of the mantra
of democratization

The moans of ringing phones
of hands, of questions
mothers tears shatter the monotone
in staccato sobs that pierce
cool, clean night air and take
babies in arms

Those bringers of arms
marching macabre of unified uniforms
so alike, indistinguished lock step
locked breath, bullet proof vests and chests
heave when babies are not bulletproof

Grave diggers for bags of bones, for tombs that are filled,
as tears fall, as words become dull
and drown the pierce through the heart as blood spills,
as from lips as condolences,
as respite for a soldiers number of kills,
and well-wishing patrons of the imagined nation
offer just cause through the seething of their
black blood, the virus of the infected,
the moral of their invective.

The parceled, compacted, contracted
lies, the simple words, flourish of flies, rhetoric
of the right
of the mighty morality of destruction
of the seduction of reconstruction
the betrayal of the silent night.

In folds of feeble diatribes, swaddled
in the veins of the righteous unrighteous
the imbibed morality of criminality
the justification for annihilation
of babies born on the wrong side
of the imagined nation.