How much longer are we going to be expected to put up with the Patriotism police? Now that pretty much everyone with a brain has realized how complicit, if not downright guilty, the government is for 9/11, can't we all agree that there are many ways to show ones' love for our country. Some of us think the love must be blind, some of us think greed is patriotic, some of us think that its our responsibility to make sure our country is a force for good in the world.

The following is a poem I wrote in 1984, soon after returning from a long train trip to Kerala in India.

I went for a clackety-clack-click rumble train trip,
tripping, rolling, clackety-click-clack
swaying,
Going my way, north, to Delhi, from Kovalam.
I met some
foreigners, four, fast, familiar, friends.
They had to Kovalam
come clackety-click-clack to fun,
and run,
in the sun,
to get undone,
under the clackety-click, high sun in the Kerala sky,
their clickety-clack lives melting, bleaching,
as they go beaching,
always reaching
for the clickety-clack secrets of the Indian villages,
stopping just short of pillages,

(they leave those clackety-clack to their brother tourist
who seeks the pitiful poorest
of the poor.
to cure their first world clickety-clack blues.
Blackened, blended, they fuse and use the peaked power
pulsing-- ping! zing! through the wires clackety-clack
But call them hypocrites or call them liars,
you'll clackety-click see their fires,
"Our wealth and waste are ours alone,
if they want some, they can get their own!")

Clackety-click
clickety-clack
And so we bitch as we roll back,
to Delhi
to home and all that Coke,
It's such a joke,
a jest, a jive,
for us to assume such a live,
living for just some day, and not too long,
in this way, as they do,
as they clackety-click pass away
behind the train, into the night,
and we clickety-clack, move off, in light,
illuminated and luminesced,
all hardships are clackety-click, recessed
beyond our beds, our berths, beyond.

They lie there sick
clickety-click
they eat their rice and onions
with lots of spice
and pick from their hair
the tiny lice
that crawl and creep
and scritch and scratch.
clackety-click
clickety-clack
But we go back.
Home.