by Paul Barclay
The President took troops out of Iraq
But he channeled them into Afghanistan
When his pastor spoke of American
Responsibility, the President said “That’s not what I’m all about”
The President moved to shut down Guantanamo Prison
But he expanded the prison in Bagram
Where the US had been sending abducted men instead
Denied them habeas corpus, treated them like dirt
The President backed a two state solution
And then he gave unconditional support to Israel
As it slaughtered Palestinians
So that no solution would come about
The past drowned so many times
In barrel after barrel of blood
The future crucified to fill
As many more barrels with blood
Government lost in fields of poppies
Sadistic acts enact an Odyssey to the home of Defeat
These conditions obtain
In our name, not on our soil
In North America an overwhelming sense of normalcy
That signifies compliance
Paul Barclay is an ex-pat Canadian living permanently in Korea. In the early 1990s he was active in Winnipeg, where a chapbook was published (Creole, Pachyderm Press) and where he himself published a series of poetry zines (including Losing It, The Winnipeg Moon, and the Dark Road Poetry Zine (the Moon Rose and the Spare Change issues). Some recent poems can be found online in ditch.