our leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife,
our chance to live depends on such a sign
while others talk and The Pentagon from the moon
is bouncing exact commands: ‘Forget your faith;
be ready for whatever it takes to win: we face
annihilation unless all citizens get in line.’
I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhere
other citizens more fearfully bow
in a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.
Our signs both mean, ‘You hostages over there
will never be slaughtered by my act.’ Our vows
cross: never to kill and call it fate.