Ali Alizadeh - The War

Are you sure my tears are righteous, not
apocryphal, or a crocodile’s? Consider this

woman’s: a victim of vaginal mutilation
a refugee from an Islamist hellhole in Africa

her frank indignation and now her élan
at winning the lucrative job of the “native

informant” to the “War on Terror.” In truncated
form: her anger at being circumcised by her vicious

grandmother, alibi for Westerners’ furious
incineration of much of the Middle East. Is

this anything but invidious, my desire to hurt
because I’ve been hurt? Many more thousand

deaths to atone for her sliced clitoris? Titular
“liberated feminist activist,” star of Western media

what does she or I propose should be done with
the traduced Muslims who do nasty things e.g. hate

Israelis, wear chador instead of flashing their
(monstrously unshaven) legs and thighs? Burn

them? With cluster bombs, bunker-busters,
tactical nukes? Grafting concern for women’s rights

onto an Imperialist quest to sequester the planet’s
“black gold” fields: our mercenary’s curriculum vitae

in short. And what about the wails of the war-torn
harmonising with the salvos at makeshift funerals

* * *

across Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Palestine,
Somalia, Lebanon, Chechnya, etc? Well, we won’t

hear of them. We’ve had our ears blocked, watching
TV, entranced by one to three languid, shiny tears

wringed by the camera from the Rasputin eyes
of the “good Arab” defector who says she loves

democracy and freedom, who vindicates this war.

Ali Alizadeh

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-war-34/