Tag: immigration

  • the crimes of President Trump, as listed in the Declaration of Independence

    The Declaration of Independence lists crimes against the American people which drove them to reject British rule. Replace ‘the King’ with ‘Trump’ and this list still makes sense.

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

    “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government… when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

    “Indictment

    A bill of particulars documenting the [President’s] ‘repeated injuries and usurpations’ of the Americans’ rights and liberties.”

    “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

    “He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

    “He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

    “He has called together legislative bodies at places [like Mar a Lago,] unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.”

    “He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”

    “He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

    “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

    “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

    “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

    “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:”

    “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

    “For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

    “For transporting us [if we are Muslim] beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences”.

    “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

    He is at this time transporting large Armies of [American soldiers to lands overseas] to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.”

    A President “whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

  • your huddled masses

    New York I am going to climb right up in your lap and press my face to your grimy heart. Where five hundred million faces have been imprinted before. The photobomber in your every selfie sweet New York. Asking scarves of passersby do you know who invented ‘photobomber’. Who invented ‘selfie.’ Brilliant language. Melted together and down in such scaldrons as New York, hell’s diner’s kitchen with menus that could make you cry.

    Chickens reared in tenements and boiled in oil with feathers still in place here and there, wispy in their tender pimpled armpits. Chickens crumbed and larded like the pilgrim invaders who thought to teach those natives a god or two in a sky already crowded with gods. Chicken homefried and served with waffles, side of fries, with bacon, with maple syrup, bitter greens. Those greens are grey. Everything green is grey. Everything khaki is red, white, and blue.

    New York I will be the umpteenth mascot for the day, with fur between her ears. We’ll be two tourists without their guns. That’s if we make it all across the ocean of Atlantis city sunk for its sin in a droning tube with nothing holding us up, my hundredth flight, the one not piloted by a male-pattern-entitlement first officer whose girlfriend left him so he watches everybody board, three carrying babies, and decides again: I will do it. I will drag the whole world down.

    Spectators at a suicide aflame: the headline, neckline, wasteline, wantline. Today we will cross the oceans intact I pray, sift on that trash heap of lilies who reap and weave incessant labour nonstop and who sleep in the street if at all and have built a Museum to the idea of Sex. A green pond. New York. I’ll be in you and you’ll be you. I’ll be dancing: the song soon, soon, soon. (That’s Korean for now. Now. Now.)

  • bella Africa

    Beautiful African woman, standing with her back to the street in a luscious canary-yellow dress. She is facing the vast windows of a display of swank cars, why? The windows rise away into the night above her head like an airport. Ah, I see. Beautiful African man, whom I didn’t see until he moved, in the dark, standing with his back to the car he has chosen for dreams, she has her phone up, he is posing. They are built like gods and light the night. I walk past with my head down, my hands full of posies of stolen plants roots and all gleaned from the gardens outside the shopping centre which I plan to propagate rather than just steal, beautiful in my way.

  • stolen man

    An African guy who lived in the apartments near me had the warmest smile always courteous and would wait on the pavement if I walked behind him so I could go by was taken away by police, five weeks ago I think, and the pot plants on his verandah are dying and now there is no cooking the evening meal on his tiny barbecue and no whistling to himself and singing as he pegs out his wash, always neatly, always pairing the socks, alone.