Subterfuge

by Kim Göransson

castro writes poetry
      on his deathbed
to sancta lucia, the patron
saint of       the burnt and
the beautiful

while the daughters of
libanon
      falls into arms of strange men
with open arms and strange names
who will write their names in the sand
and point toward a certain desert
with a certain kind of sand

freedom is something
that you pass on
and down,
like a gift

      life,
like a gift
as we know it, will never
be the same
again

      too bad
we really never knew
to begin with

we thought we knew
      we held hands and we knew
we wrote it all down in our books
we thought we remembered
would remember for all time

      and words are on the lips
of important people

      and smoke lingers on the lips
of dead people

      and the newspapers need
complete sentences

murder, liberation, oriental minds
with guns and blinds
to back down
impossible, to lift your hand
tip your hat in a different direction
disclosure, its hard to find
an open mind
it's hard to find
an open mind

        castro leans across his
american beauty, and whispers
words of air into the ears of his brother
pass on and pass on
freedom is something,
        down
                  down

subterfuge, sucks you out
inside your head you're already behind
enemy's lines
and you're reading faster and faster
but you will never really catch up, never really
understand

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