America: A Poem [with Apologies to Walt Whitman]

Spread like an egg yolk

On the frying pan of the ocean

Who were the cooks that brought you to the East?

On a plate called an aircraft carrier,

Oh you who fried the fat of the rejected [Reference to U.S. plundering Arab lands].

You [America] were forbidden to us

Therefore we ate you [America]

While punch drunk from being slapped in the face.

Your flags are flying, colored red and blue

Like slain whales in the sea

Your flags

Are spread by your soldiers over their tanks

Which, though they are huge,

Appear small like ants.

We were sleeping

When your wolves [troops] howled in our fields

The guards who provoked them ran away [Baathists, Iraqi Army]

Carrying the keys to their locks [their homes]

Hoping to come back after our deaths [of average innocent Iraqis]

To steal from our skulls

Our gold teeth

Oh … It is useless to feel regret

We are bored from the straw dolls [blowhard politicians]

In the fields and on the plains.

America

Your ships ply the darkness of the seas without medical goggles

Today they swim in our coffee cups [U.S. Ships in the Gulf]

And we are unable to dissolve them with a spoonful of sugar

We used to love you before we ate your eggs [as the occupation began].

And after we ate the eggs, they blew up in our stomachs

They turned out to be bombs.

America

We applauded your tanks

Even though they stuffed our bellies with smoke and dust

We were happy

Running after your metal

Fooling to our eyes as though they were butterflies

Your promises were like rain

They wetted us

And made our feverish bodies cool

But the rain of promises created pools of mud

Which covered us

The only thing left were our bald heads

Implanted in the soil like the air bubbles of those who drowned

Yes

You removed the dictator from our land

But in his place

You planted terrorists in our scalps

America

Our shoulders are sore from holding the rifles

Our eyes are bloodshot from the waiting

For centuries we have been straddling the walls

Hoping the wall itself would shoot over the horizon

We were not looking for [Western] jeans

Nor Viagra

But your president

In our ears poured boiling water [He made promises that hurt Iraqis in the end].

Thinking that our taste will become sweet [That Iraqis would cooperate].

America

We blame you

Because having so much

Didn’t prevent you from stepping on our feet

You gluttonous nation

Our feet are stained with mud

And not chocolate

My advice to the fire swallowers

And the ember biters [people boldly seeking change] is

Look at our burned bodies

Before you throw your own onto the fire [Beware of help from outsiders].

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