I awoke the other day–a day following another attack on sovereign land. Another attack, like so many attacks, justified and prepared in advance. Tied up neat with a bow, written out through think-tanks, executed under duress.
These words kept drumming in my head, over and over, they wouldn’t let me go:
I have a list of sins
From my country of origin…
I had to get it out of me. Years of watching from the sidelines–decades of listening to a narrative that never fit, that made me (in some way) complicit.
To be fair, I love my country and its people. Where I rest this poem is at the foot of conquest, killing-for-profit, hostile takeover of culture, both foreign and domestic.
People are beautiful, even those who commit sins on behalf of their citizens. What motivates us is ultimately what we hold as our greatest attachment to fear, pulling us like puppets. Hierarchy is this way, as is subjugation.
In my country of origin, people are wedded to comfort, politicians and war machines to profit, and the cycles continue.
Until it doesn’t.
I hope that this poem stirs the one in you who has a voice and rings like a bell, clutching your heart, galvanizing you to live your precious life, without strings…
My Country of Origin
I have a list of sins
From my country of origin
Let this litany
Begin to mend
Relations
Between this troubled
Nation
My opiate
Was to expiate
A chosen exit
Through expatriation
First I must apologize
On behalf of these crazed
Politicians
Their misdeeds came easily
Greedily driven by insatiability
Bought and sold
For all the oil and gold
Their coffers hold
Deceived mobs
Through the fog of war
Misinformation spilled maliciously
Pamphlets
Promoting peace
Felled by war machines
Concomitantly dropping missiles
With their missives
Regime changes
Toppling leaders like Jenga boards
Assigning despotic heads
As crooked step-parents
Sock puppets
To the iron hand
In charge
While shadows
Loom large
As specters
Hectoring
Prospective
Insurrectors
Pulled strings
Travel far
Trammeled lands
Covert war
Sinister plans
They had in store
To profit
Off of horror
An avalanche of refuse
Indecent treatment of refugees
In exodus
An excess of culture wars
Filling desperate minds
With propagandist grist
Of deep state specialists
Painted scenes of sympathy
Subconsciously sowing the seed
Of antipathy
That we despoiled your lands
Making men into migrants
Weaving women into widows
Winnowing out your best and brightest
Mining and exporting
Your finest
Tanks and missiles cutting through your streets
Like thunder
Is it any wonder
You grew distasteful
Of foreign plunder
A bounty taken
From my country
Claimed at the cost
Of your sovereignty
Fomenting hatred
In your most despondent
Forming radicalized first responders
My leaders would call this clapback
To further grease the wheels of the war
Apparatus
But I call it blowback
I hope you didn’t buy their lies
It wasn’t freedom they were offering
It was fealty in disguise
It was imperialism without the flags
It was modernity without your gods
Killing culture like carrion
As they stood above the carcasses
Like vultures
And though I can hear another bell
Rung by the belligerent and bellicose
I hold vigil with the vigilant
As we stare across the signal
Deciding this is not the line to cross
For the next world war
I come before you
In confessional
Ringing my hands
Compassionately committed
That I will not waste a single breath
Living the life I left
To fuel this existential threat
Wagered by seasoned sinners
False pretense
Wedded to comfort
Suffered at another’s expense
Partners
Uncomfortably dancing
On a mound
Of international debt
Until there’s nothing left
There is no win
In my country of origin
There are only passed down sins
From its sons
Aimed
At neighboring countrymen
This has been a Living Transmission Poetry Beat. Thank you for joining me!
Benjamin
Share this post