Divide and Rule. Walid Bitar

punishment a lower sound barrier,

      our speech’s value incalculable

      as oxygen’s, because regular users

      are sometimes the rich, sometimes the poor,

      these beasts of burden driving me wild

      till I’m so comfortable in my skin

      I fall back on memories I shouldn’t trust,

      and don’t expect they’ll break my fall.

      DIGGING A HOLE

      Heavily censored, how tunnellers live:

      as we please, around here, an elite –

      in the majority, persons of interest

      cultivating for rices and beans.

      I jump beautifully out of the way

      before a backlash our lower classes

      consider a right: holding the noble man’s

      feet to a fire he carelessly sets.

      Dance, my eldest shall study abroad.

      Rather than institutions of higher

      learning, I chose water muddied

      by my dirty shoes, peered into depths

      and started digging a hole, first step

      toward destabilizing the planet,

      its orbit difficult to disturb,

      its hot core solid, or I’d fan the flames.

      CONTRACTORS

      This phony warrior’s armed to the teeth,

      our barks and his bites all but synchronized,

      the son of a bitch – I mean, of a state

      that doesn’t love him, and he doesn’t love.

      Dash upstairs – praise to the skies

      what might fall on us if it isn’t in them,

      yours no future money couldn’t buy,

      or, failing that, at least destroy.

      Do me this favour and, in exchange,

      I’ll mask ingratitude; a disguise

      overwhelms the plain truths any day.

      It looks like somebody, and so do I,

      most at home under another’s name –

      not just an alias – in another’s thoughts,

      yours for example. They irritate me

      a little less than if I had had them.