Fixed Frequencies

Here in the land that Abraham was promised to receive

We listen to you catechize from your pulpit overseas

You mourn the proof of our barbarity

Dry your eyes, oh Pharisee. We both speak a settler’s can't

We both read from the same old played out scripts and hum familiar tunes

Broadcast on fixed frequencies, stuck in locking grooves

We both profess noble intent

As we civilize human impediments

If your hands are clean then noblesse oblige

That you wipe those "who me?" looks off of your faces and concede

Our designs are separated by

Nothing more than place and time

Different scenes, same crimes

Pray, let him without sin cast the first statues of

Former rogues turned folk heroes

That your grandfathers hung

Don't lecture me about plundered soil

While you loaf upon your father's spoils

We want nothing more than what you already have

A comforting of exculpatory "facts"

Like, say, the myth of an empty land and a conquest so complete

We can pull these tanks from our streets and

Hand the loose ends over to bureaucrats and become just like you -

Lounging carefree in cafes, absolved from sin

And human grenades. Entre nous

How did your desert bloom?