Amreekai means American

the story of my people 
is a tragedy, will drip with sadness
like a poets pen,

how could a land of poetry 
be anything but a tragedy, where the 
sky opens up and pours like a wound
like tears from a mothers face 
onto an unmarked grave. 

Amrika, the three syllables of their 
misfortunes, it tastes like the bitterness of 
dark chocolate when the sweet has faded, 
sticking to the back of teeth, 

i did not know that a string of countries could hold
so much pain, pain that sits in the souls
of every one of us, a gaping hole where hope used to lay, 

i watch the news and yet again,
our bleeding hearts are being help up to to the world
like prizes, and i want to tell you, 

begone, amreekai, you were never wanted here,
if only white hands could keep to themselves, 

but we still find your fingerprints inside the 
bodies of our sons who died fighting for our land, 
blood staining the ground, and your fingerprints smell like

oil & other peoples money, like
blood deals & broken homes, like
collateral damage & drones, like
'thou shalt not kill' but here we are, like
democracies you broke & land you stole, like
never your land but always your war,
like never your land, but always your war,
like those children who will never unremember the 
shaking of the ground & the dark of the basements 
& the sound of anti aircraft guns, 

tell me, amreekai, did you know that war 
spreads like a bruise through generations, 
that you have tinged millions of people purple
with your need to be more than you are,

amreekai, you have not seen the soil of 
you childhood home tinged red with the blood
of people you knew, amreekai, 

give me my tears back, because lately i 
have been crying about your almost-crimes, 
because of your never-deaths, 
because when you make a threat i 
can see grandmother home as a pile of rubble, 

tell me, amreekai, do you know what it is like
to be afraid, afraid of those dogs who have torn 
through nation after nation, to be afraid of them 
coming for you at last, 

amreekai, you have never fled from a country
that had nothing for you but pain and then 
loved it so much that you died from a broken heart,

do not tell me, amreekai, that toppling this government
is good for me when it is a monster that you created, 
do you know, amreekai,

what it is like to lose yourself in a sky that 
your anscestors split open with their 
mustard-gas stained tears, split open 
with all of their lives that could have been, 
but never were, 

tell me how you took away all those lives that we could 
have had, all the people that would have been, all 
the things that we could have made, with a single sweep of your hand, 

amreekai, give us the country we could have had back, 
and we will give you the peace you claim to so desperately want.