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A Country For All
So what country did you make?
Is it a penthouse, or a rented cubbyhole
in the same sky high city where the difference
is the size of your hold-out that can also peer out.
When the TV is silent and sullen
do you wonder
what other country you belong to?
Do you risk getting shot
for just looking out of a window,
or do you lollygag over fine wines
and does your bowtie spin
when you grin?
Do the people guard you
or impinge upon your sovereignty
with their greasy knives and forks?
Did you register as a foreigner
with the borderless guard dogs?
Did your country come with
a trash compactor and a rattrap?
I also come from a land as isolated as yours.
I travel incognito
as a stranger known to be unwanted
until kidnapped.
Did you choke twice
over an olive in your dirty martini?
Did you vow to stay far away
from the drug-dazed
and only send out or call in
for your own addictions?
Does your country salute you
for having regular bowel movements,
for not clogging up the toilet bowl?
I, like you, wrote my own constitution
it is written on an old postcard
that I sent to myself.
Are you a founder or a spy
snooping from an eye in the sky?
I may visit your county;
feel free to borrow my nose hair trimer,
my first born.
We, the Emperors of just enough space
should ratify unworkable treaties,
we may need to test
the limits of a mutual hostility.
When you turn the TV back on
do you, like me, wonder what country
this is that hates us from afar?
Blow smoke, smoke blow, suck when necessary,
bruit a patriotic vapor
into a rattling air conditioner,
never surrender.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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