It took them a long hard time
to get from elsewhere to here.
It could have been from anywhere

but you should ask them 
where it was and
what it was like there.

You should know; 
you should not negate it, diminish it,
or assume they want to forget.

There are differences
between Montevideo, Tegucigalpa,
Talinn, Lviv.

Do not assume
they are interchangeable.
Do not assume they forget

once they arrive. Forgetting 
is up to them, their children,
their grandchildren. 

Look at the state of
the country. You
haven’t forgotten;

your people 
didn’t forget. Haven’t yet.
Built a new world based on

their old world. Now
it’s their turn to do the same,
and all the whining

and gunfire
you can muster
won’t make it stop.

When the heralds stood 
on the mountainside,
waved their hands
and banners over
the masses assembled below
and said:

yes, every one;

that is where they lost me.

I looked around
without malice or even much fear
and realized at that moment
how distant these people
were from each other

even as we
were herded together, touching
shoulders in the throng, breathing
the same clear mountain air, 

all of them
choosing to repeat
without concern
for truth or motive
what they were told:

that they liked
each other, even loved each other
like family; were truly united
in the valley there 
in the shadow of the high peaks,
none of them thinking
there was anything strange
about being called nation
or congregation
so forcefully,
so insistently.

Yes.
Every one.
A nation, a congregation.

I turned my face away
from the mountain top people
not out of malice or even much fear;

I just had somewhere else to be. 

I’ve punched up. I’ve punched back. I keep
punching though every blow busts my hands a bit more. 

I don’t much care about direction. All I feel
is a need to punch. Swinging is 

patriotic. Connecting is manly. Walking away
to seek a new battle is as natural to me

as a storm disappearing after shredding
everything, heading off to look for work elsewhere,

as staying home to rebuild is work best left
to those who won’t punch hard enough 

to level a field that needs clearing. I level up.
My home’s a bad place now; no one’s willing

to do dirty work. Dirty wet work is how 
I have become what I am: alone. Advancing

toward the next battlefield, then the next.
Making my way away from what I thought was home.