i.
There is a time to look inward and spot
the failing mechanisms, the gathering rot;
to gobble up the rebel
self, spit the waste, while renewing
all that remains above level,
something our cells are masters at doing,
and we, the masters of selves, are not.
ii.
A loud voice vows to heal, but instead
devours—the difference between these a thread
on which the world hangs.
The serpent on Asclepius’ rod
strikes with poisonous fangs
when, in the name of good or God,
it blurs this line (like murderers who blame the dead).
iii.
Our nation’s body writhes with an invasive
autoimmune inflammation—
a turning upon itself
in havoc of core-value reversal.
“Build up the commonwealth
by kicking common out of the circle,”
he madly scribbles in chalk the gibberish equation.
iv.
Hurry, before the quivering scale tips!
Even now Demeter bids
Famine come and make
her home in the void in our veins drained
of empathy, to wake
in us Erysichthon’s insane
insatiable hunger clamoring like katydids,
v.
driving us mad, to the slippery edge of eating
ourselves to death, brutes repeating
the ancient tragedy.
The rhetoric of fear in service of greed
fuels chaotic energy
building momentum, gathering speed
toward the absurdity of not knowing on what we are feeding,
vi.
while the torchlight in the beacon-hand of the harbor’s
fierce lady loses its ardor,
almost extinguished in air
grown dank and thin by protectionist breath.
The teeming shores where
huddled masses are looking, are left
looking at the faint flame fading farther
vii.
away. Mother of Exiles, forgive our sin.
The Judge is calling and we will defend
our plaintive case as such
against powers that angrily claim
we doth protest too much,
that, far from despoiling our venerable name,
they are making America great again.
viii.
Can true greatness mock one who is weaker
without undermining the merit of the speaker?
To say they come from shithole
countries, to say they poison our blood,
call them garbage, withhold
welcome, declaring we don’t want them to come–
the voice of Cain, that failed brother’s keeper.
ix.
Can a great mind fail to distinguish
individuals from the group in which
they belong by birth or border?
Can greatness speak in stereotype,
soil of incipient murder,
manipulating cliché to incite
the swayable mob mind to thoughts fiendish
x.
and foolish, unbecoming of a noble nation?
No! Speech is revelation,
and by the words we choose
we disrobe in public, unveil
our nakedness, remove
the mask our words insist is real
by the very words themselves in traitorous action.
xi.
Again I ask of greatness: would it ever
stoop to use deceit to further
its ends? Ask a person
to dutifully follow through
on required paperwork, then
snatch him up in ambush coup
claiming noncompliance as the lever?
xii.
Lovers marry. Long years of red-tape.
The day comes to end the headache,
his green card in sight!
It’s true he’s overstayed his papers,
but now making things right
with a second solemn signing, flavor
of sweet finality in the reaching handshake—
xiii.
suddenly to be cruelly ripped apart
by legal statutes a la carte.
Where is human scope?
Where is perspective of the bigger
picture? Dashed hope
on a microscopic scale figures
to eventually eat away a nation’s heart.
xiv.
Would true greatness ever speak out of both
sides of its proverbial mouth
by withdrawing protection from some
people, saying their country is ample
safe for them to go home,
while declaring a level four travel
advisory for our citizens not to approach?
xv.
How about Yemen for your son’s next job interview,
or Afghanistan for your daughter’s school?
Off to Haiti with Grandma
or a family vacation in Somalia?
Do to your neighbor and all
the human family, following the
golden rule, what you would want done to you.
xvi.
Double-standard disease is a long erosion,
washing to sea in undercut motion
the ground on which one builds.
By substituting sand for cement,
two-faced policy kills
and renders the seawall impotent
against the rising of an inevitable ocean.
xvii.
Any quest for greatness is aborted by abusing
power, like in the cruel choosing
to send freshly detained
powerless captives over to countries
not their own, a strange
and unusual punishment, something
that is forbidden by our own constitution’s
xviii.
eighth amendment. Take South Sudan,
wracked by wide-spread ravage. Can
you imagine that a place
for a man (with no one to watch
his back) to reveal his face?
Rationales aside, can we wash
our hands of even the criminal countryless man?
xix.
Consider next the plight of refugees,
who pass through exponential degrees
of turmoil, hard to imagine,
years of a laborious fraught fight,
finally given to land in
this country of freedom and human rights.
And now, with a hungry constituency to appease,
xx.
driven by officials obsessed with numbers and drama,
these precious refugee papas and mamas
are blindsided with news
that their papery cocoon of safe
haven is subject to review,
revoking a promise once given in faith,
capsizing hard-won peace back into waters of trauma.
xxi.
O, this yoyo-ing, this toying with one human being—
a dazzle-splendored immortal thing
greater than any nation
(that temporary construct made
to serve the person)! Ages
and ages hence what will remain
but poor refugees turned glorious queens and kings.
xxii.
Single lives affect the fate of empires
as sparks lead to forest fires.
The flames of Marimar Martinez,
Renée Good, Alex Pretti,
Longoria, Carlos Jimenez,
Aliya Rahman, slow and steady,
are burning away the misinformation of liars.
xxiii.
Ironic that in the name of law and order
there is such skirting of the lawful border:
disregarding the warrant,
blatant betrayal of due process—
that in blaming the “torrent
of immigrant violent crime” caustic
violence is tolerated to the point of excusing murder.
xxiv.
It is nothing more than propaganda
to paint immigrants as a band of
vicious criminals. The facts
do not support such a fiction.
Of those in detention, just ask—
a fraction have violent criminal convictions.
This smear campaign is a smoke and mirrors bonanza,
xxv.
and is only leading us to the edge of a break.
Will we consume ourselves or wake
up to the manipulative spin?
There is another—a better way forward:
choose to become again
what we have been in days before,
the glorious melting pot that makes us great.
xxvi.
Here is a vision and we will not let it go!
Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
our refugees and immigrants
thrown into the mean-spirited fire
burn with a resilience
coast to coast, wire to wire,
from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
xxvii.
We begin by listening. Their stories thrust
upon our imagination a husk
which we enter with grace
and see we would have done the same
thing were we in their place,
bearing their burdens, feeling their pain.
When I speak of them, do I not mean us?
xxviii.
Are we not a nation made up of others?
The indigenous—O what they suffered—
should claim their priority spot
in the story of the belonging creed.
Everyone else ought
recheck their guest credentials and plead
forgiveness from the children of their mothers.
ixx.
Let the children born here bear the name
of citizen proudly without shame.
How their parents came
to be here is their parents' story
period. Do not blame
the children. Rather fling the doorway
open to possibility. Fan the flame
xxx.
for them here in the land of the soaring eagle!
Let the Dreamers rise up on a league of
thermals, circling higher
and higher. Their success will lift
us all and inspire
again the American dream gift
as a possibility for all people.
xxxi.
Spend money to fix our broken system
rather than build walls and tend them
with imperial storm troopers.
Invest in more asylum judges
for the sake of a future
without monstrous lines, as much as
lines drain the hope of why people get in them.
xxxii.
Granting asylum is human decency
on a national scale. To be
a refuge is the height
of honor. To turn away those
who, scarred, stand in sight
of our ample safe spaces, our rows
and rows of food and houses, is ignominy.
xxxiii.
We need not fear more people! The sluggish wheels
of agricultural harvest reveal
farms are in a crisis
for lack of seasonal workers scared
away by tactics ICE is
proud of, while we are ill prepared
to entice domestic workers out into the fields.
xxxiv.
Enough of fear mongering! Our undocumented
neighbors pay taxes, keep houses rented,
work tough jobs,
raise children, enrich our streets,
faithfully worship God,
send money to relatives in need,
obey the laws (with, yes, one left unattended).
xxxv.
But if there were a path—a clear path—
though it be quite steep and ask
for much—if there were steps
that could be taken with confidence—
reasonable, reachable, accept-
able ladder rungs—everyone wins
and greatness would rise from the morass at last.
xxxvi.
The plumb line for this greatness is a door
in the valley of the tired and poor,
through which the storied pomp
cannot squeeze their camels (sauced
with connections and cash to flaunt),
but open wide to the tempest-tost
to pass through and blossom like never before.
xxxvii.
In the providence of God Who loves the upside down,
in the eyes of God Who gazes upon
our affairs and takes note,
the humble will be lifted and freed,
the proud and mighty broken.
This is as sure as gravity
for every place and people under the sun.
xxxviii.
America cannot be called a Christian nation.
How can it be when to be Christian
means to self-decrease
and to forgive one’s enemies?
At the very least,
if not Christian, America could seek
to become more human, and not just in abstraction,
xxxix.
but in the manner of treating the stranger among us.
Secure borders need not plunge us
into hostile displays.
Surely we could humanize
our labyrinthine maze
with a ball of thread to neutralize
the beast that devours in ways that do not become us,
xl.
or else the plague of Erisychthon’s old
recurring curse will bitterly unfold
within us. We will sell
our sons and daughters to relieve
Famine’s insatiable spell,
only then to turn and begin to eat
our limbs, our heart, consume our very soul.