poem of the day 09.15.09

detention center nation

it’s not our fault the spoons
arrived late,
and the mexicans had to eat
their rice and beans with their hands.
spoons arrive late sometimes.
and the one who tried to hang himself
with a bed sheet,
well, hell, he was just angry about
something else.
he was probably angry over a woman,
that’s all.
everything is under control here,
okay?
we got nearly 20,000 of them
off the streets,
and set for deportation back to mexico
or venezuela
or cuba,
or wherever the hell they came from.
does it even matter?
what should matter is that your cities,
and your town, the whole infrastructure
of this great land,
is safer with these people gone.
look, you are free now to go back to
all of those jobs in the sweatshops,
in the fast food restaurants,
in the shit-filled ditches, that you said
were taken from you.
oh shit!
we forgot the influx of new chinese.
well, we’ll have to round them up too.
plenty of room coming, and haliburton
is on hand to help.
why the glum faces? you should all be happy.
it’s been a long time
with these people sneaking into america
and stealing all of our jobs.
yes? yes? a question?
no...i don’t think that plant is moving back
to detroit.
no...that one isn’t moving back to buffalo either.
you’re missing the point here, people!
we got them.
we got thousands of them.
we got them in camps
they’ll never escape from.
and if we have to we’ll put them in every
city that has a potential problem.
can you imagine:
new york
boston
los angeles
san francisco
even cleveland and pittsburgh,
their skylines inhabited with newly built
state-of-the art detention facilities,
with food and rooms and sheets and showers,
and everything these people will need
for the safe and proper transfer back to wherever
they came from.
heat?
yes, i know we’ve had trouble thus far with
the heating.
but people aren’t freezing to death,
even though the winter’s been cold
and brutal.
wait....what?
why’d you have to go and bring up
the japanese and world war two?
these aren’t internment camps.
we’re fully committed to sending
these people home.
we don’t want them here, right?
we’re trying to get the nation back on track, agreed?
you’ll see.
and after that wall along the u.s./mexican border is built
we’ll have less of a need
for these kinds of buildings than we do now.
we can turn them into schools, or apartments
for the poor.
it’ll be great.
we just have to stand together on this.
because america stands for freedom,
and freedom isn’t free, baby,
unless you work for it,
and do your best to keep the undesirables out.

02.28.07