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Tuesday
Listen
to this poem!
By Adriel Luis
It’s a Tuesday night
And I remember that it’s a Tuesday night because my sister is waiting
for American Idol in hot anticipation
But the show is not on
It’s interrupted by some annoying report on some attack on Iraq…again
Okay, I’m lying….I’m waiting for American Idol
But
Every channel I flip through flips to this crazy report
And now I’m flipped out because
This time they’re not just talking
U.S. military jets are actually hovering over Iraq
Leaving buildings, streets, and people flaming
These sharks they invade the sky
They sing the song of justice but when performed live it sounds like a death
chant
I’m watching CNN on a Tuesday night and I’m trippin because
as American planes drop bombs over Baghdad, a small red marquee
scrolls the bottom of the screen saying, “God, please protect the U.S.A.
from foreign invaders.”
Something just seems off
and there’s this inkling in me that this whole war is off but who am I,
right?
I’m not some political specialist or expert on US–Iraqi relations
Who am I to judge?
I haven’t studied international conflicts at length
I never did extended research on why every Bush presidency comes with a Gulf
War in specially marked packages
I’m just a kid from the suburbs where the most prominent landmarks are
a Krispy Kreme and a WalMart
I’m just a boy who writes haikus about chicken and being Asian and American
Idol
Who am I to even consider questioning these brilliant military expertise smart
people
All I know is that I’m watching CNN on a Tuesday night and Dick and Bush
are telling me “Better safe than sorry.”
That just in case Saddam Hussein is planning to kill our children, we need to
kill his first
Just in case
But hey, better safe than sorry right?
I’m watching with stiff attention
And I can’t help but ask myself what niseis in the 1940s felt as they
were tucked into concentration camps just in case their yellow skin meant that
they possessed like hearts with the slant eyed demons on propaganda posters
Rounded like alien cattle they had no numbers injected into their wrists
But the perceptions were branded — potential terrorist.
I’m watching CNN and I wonder what Diallo saw as 41 glares of insecurity
shattered his chest
Did he understand that his black face summoned insecure bullets, just in case
the wallet his fingers reached for was actually a bazooka
What Pilipino airport screeners sensed as their lives toppled like twin towers
Did they realize that they could not be trusted just in case their brown hands
allowed disloyalty to pass through on conveyor belts
What were the gas station owners’ last words
Did he have a chance to tell them he was not Osama bin Laden
That the name was not one birthed from his Pakistani tongue
Just in case they cared
But hey, better safe than sorry right?
Tell me CNN
For whose safety?
There is an empty barrel of apology
It spills over with blood, and sympathy is as foreign as Baghdad is to the average
American
I’m watching CNN and I’m asking
If the terror alert here is red, than what horrid hue must it be in Iraq?
Something seems off
Iraqi children are gutted by foreign policy
How ironic it is
That they die to reconciliations
That they no longer have to live
in fear
American sharks have sucked them dry
CNN broadcasts
Images of New York crumbling
Images of Baghdad exploding
The two are related in ways besides the cries of the ignorant who enlisted to
occupy Iraq to claim vengeance against Afghanistan
Bombs over Baghdad
Wool over our eyes
We’re in over our heads
As Iraqi children are gutted on streets
They no longer have to live
But who am I to get pissed?
Call me stupid but I break it down like this
Iraq is run by Saddam Hussein
America’s run by the damned insane
It makes me question who is really to blame as a terrorist in this game
I’m watching Iraq’s attacks and I have nothing left to say
But that George Bush is an a&#hole
And this war is his sh*& stain.
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