Friday, August 10, 2012

APOLOGIES TO THE SIKHS

by George Held

Wade Michael Page, right, with his band End Apathy.

We are deeply sorry that Wade M. Page
So deeply troubled by his rage
At the flood of folks with brown skin,
Turbans, and black hair on their chin
Whom he perceived a mortal threat
To our way of life in America
That he flaunted a swastika
Tattoo high up on his shoulder . . .

We are very sorry that Wade M. Page
Was so confounded by his rage
That he mistook your holy temple
For a mosque and you peaceful
Sikhs for Islamic terrorists,
But you must know the limitations
Of our high-school education
And Army indoctrination,

For those are all that Wade M. Page
Had received to deal with that rage
At the sight of the new unwhites
Who would dilute his great nation’s
Fundamentalist foundation.
So we ask you, please, to forgive
This pitiful example of American
Exceptionalism on a rampage:

He was speaking just for Wade M. Page,
Not all the other bigots in a rage
At all those other brown-skinned folk
Who’ve turned America into a joke
In their eyes. Of course, you Sikhs
Might have been at the movies in Aurora
Or the shopping mall in Arizona
Or the campus at VA Tech

Or somewhere else where an outrage
will be the work of another Wade M. Page . . .


An occasional contributor to The New Verse News, George Held occasionally blogs at www.georgeheld.blogspot.com.
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