Sleeping Child

(Written for Lenina. Published in Gossamer)

How do I tell her who is a terrorist…
Don’t the terrorists profit from those 
Gap Kids clothes she is wearing today?

When the buildings collapsed 
And terrorized eight hundred 
Underpaid workers in that sweatshop
Didn’t the terrorists make merry 
Looking the other way –

The way of uninterrupted greed,
As the Walton families scoop 
Another couple of billion dollars
Didn’t I buy her cereal off their shelves?

The comic characters she watches 
Spun by the deceit of the hate funders
From the Nazi Germany days till today; 

Or isn’t the terrorizing force the books
She reads which make no mention 
Of the annihilated indigenous peoples
Replaced by sinister slaveowners
She must respect as founding fathers?

One after another president gleefully
Preaching to her values of patriotism
In name of which profiteering wars
Find justifications, and she will nod 
Her head, her empty slate of a mind
That will be overwritten with lies after 
Lies after lies about who is a terrorist
And who is a decent human being. 

From the small television propaganda 
To the Imax theater saving the world       
From the french fries of McDonald’s 
Teaching the barbaric fast food values

To the toy stores with guns, video games 
Making noise akin to the misguided bullets
Saying cheese to selfish units called families
Learning of capital cities and spelling bees

To win my praise, when she will win a race
Leaving her classmates behind in the chase
Terrorized by failing grade, or dropping out
Cheered for abiding, without a doubt

Teachers and preachers with moral lessons
Terrorizing her of hell, if she throws questions
God’s own land, greatest nation of all
Bombing all dissenters, still standing tall  

How do I tell her who are the terrorists 
So long as the very fabric of this culture exists
And if I expect her to challenge this foundation
Will they end up branding her a terrorist nation? 

By Saswat Pattanayak