Sydney Airport,
November 1, 1991…
Waiting at customs, thank fuck we’re here.
By contrast the transit lounge in Beirut
is full of assholes who love to fuck
with a Palestinian refugee and his brown passport,
even when he’s leaving their country
doing just what they want.
Conscience doesn’t grow on trees
it grows in the dark
when you’re waiting with little children,
when you’re waiting to see
if they will find you and kill you this time
or not.
*
On the private thoughts
of a Militant
We operate on the theory that every one of them is a killer
and we can’t see what’s inside a man’s heart
So we’ll kill them all
just to be safe
*
untitled…
Every year they gather in the holy city
and one of them recites passages
from the holy text
and does a little improvisation,
the one I chanced was begging god,
the god of this chosen people,
to make them victorious over their enemies…
he breaks down and cries mid stream,
has god forsaken them?
He never stops to ask why his prayers are always
in the present tense and why god never answers them.
*
untitled…
In the night the paper parapet rustles like leaves
And the blue star of David on the cotton rag
Motions like an eternal wave on an eternal sea
The army marches past the mosque
And defends the fluid borders at all human cost
And any hope of learning the fiery lesson is lost
When the thin line of wisdom spills into fear
and is crossed.
So many worshippers so copious a pile of lies
And an invented history in all cases
*
untitled…
The darkness within
is a museum
of carcasses
displaced
dislodged
disembodied
masculinity at the zenith
and paragon of creation
There for the infinite resource
the moment you shut your eyes.
Your eyelids are holographs
canvassed by the madness
A repressed musco-skeletal system
itching to be used
hauled back by conscience
and the pride that you choose
not to be like them
not to invent the gun