by Hani Faisal Saigh
Poetry
(Swans - November 7, 2005)
You used to radiate with hope across your open landscapes I remember
Warm arms extended you welcomed my flesh and I surrendered
You'd captivate my mind telling stories of the streets in your tender times
When people like me found solace in your arms
I woke with child-like wonder no matter where you laid my head
I accepted your meager offerings
as if they pleased me the greatest
I walked with pride to be at your side
and cheered the heroes that fought to protect us
That girl grew up
with Wanton heart & Wistful ways
That change in the wind keeps her
children living in poverty
While she fattens her bosom
America
No longer the beautiful
What was once a land is now scarred, burnt-out ravages of robber barons
Who answer only to their investors
What was once a dream
is now a terrible vision on Television:
30,000 innocents slaughtered
to keep politicians employed and well paid
our doctors and lawyers
now drug dealers and thieves
They watch the action from large homes with thick walls and big screen TV's
They watch foreign people bereave the loss of all loved ones
Crying out for god or someone like him
We betray the dignity our forces once held in foreign nations
Fighting oppression, preaching freedom & independence
denouncing poverty, hate & reckless life taking
Now it's rape of the soil and take all they've got left
What is the difference, I wonder, between her child and yours?
Do you think she loved him any less because...
her god isn't yours?
she spoke to him in a distant tongue?
wore foreign clothes?
breast-fed him from an Arab tit?
A child suffering a napalm blast Is
a child suffering none-the-less
I Hope You Can't Sleep
I Hope You Can't Rest
I Hope Your Heart Bleeds
Seven Seeds of Unrest
America
You ARE the terrorist nation
While they wake and see the opportunity that surrounds them
While they walk non-toxic paths through the Forests that they've re-planted
Following your greed always walking after your wars mending
The EARTH and HER inhabitants
Always following your systems & machines
minds plotting following close behind Dismantling Always
Recreating, re-dreaming, being Uncompromisable about it
SCREAMING
Through the very halls that you've erected
America
We are your children
Seeing all this violence that you've placed before us
Accumulating the Karmic deficit which is all you leave us
as a hope for our future
What you describe now as glory is
Twenty years down the road sitting at some VFW selling coffee to stay barely fed and boarded
America why have you stolen our youth
only to replace it with addiction & depression?
With guns turned to heads or complete disrespect
for all the temples you've desecrated
Even the artifacts of our Mesopotamian past is not worth protecting
Why did you hate me at birth so that
I could only grow to love you in the saddest way?
That I could only hope through a tear that you haven't
disappeared
That I can only hope that you burn in more hearts than you've burned
America
Once the most beautiful, I remember