the plastic billboard looms like a sentry:
“terrorism is the enemy, but its accomplice is complacency.”
a rousing bit of homeland security poetry,
commandant michael jerktoff
suddenly feeling whitmanesque,
as if the bard of brooklyn bridge
were a naked fascist.
suddenly, i wish i were the chief, rather than his accomplice,
batman instead of robin, pulse throbbin,
imagining i had the minaret height of osama bin laden,
pretending that my watermelon head
was confined by a turban,
that i carried a copy of the koran, visibly highlighted
by my earnest recitation, head swaying back and forth
like a ramadan lamb on a hook,
finding mecca on the metro train.
suddenly, i was pretending that my skin
was the shade of burning oil rigs,
and that i was recently laid off in kuwait
because imported sri lankans
could fix oil rigs cheaper than me.
suddenly, i was imagining i got my diploma
from a famous madrassa,
a prize pupil who would make an outstanding imam,
but destiny calls me to the holiness of obliteration,
pretending my backpack is filled with something fatal,
one pull of the cord away from martyrdom
for a reason that nobody here even understands-
what does it mean to kill innocent people,
in fact, to be innocent at all,
when we are stone cold locusts, swarming underneath
the avenues of the Metropolis?
