[Newspoetry] Poetry Contest, anyone?

[emerick at chorus.net]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/opinion/28KRIS.html?th

Nick Kristof's editorial today invites poems on the occupation of Iraq.

Query on the term "occupation" here?
It nothing about employment -- or is it?
Is it not exotic and mysterious, Stranger,
to displace force of arms in a far country --
as if our own were not far away from us at all 
(See Michael Moore, Dude, Where's My Country?) -- as "occupation," vocational or career preference --
a brief item for an overblown job resume. 

We were occupied, says an Iraqi --
but he means that he is a displaced person,
barred from primal acts of self-governance,
of constitutional formation and nation-building,
freely electing unregimented regime-changing regimens,
irregulars against regulars; Normalizing
odd lots out-sourced in their own homeland.

Reg-i-men wars against common men and women,
who find self in calls to throw off tyranny,
which every government finally insists upon,
as a condition of its informal constitution,
the one that is never to be written down,
the one that Bush lives by and we die by.

Self-governance is not of self, at all,
nor does its governance begin at home --
self-governance always sticks it to others
because they might stick it to you,
beat you with croooked stick, distaff,
until you're black and blue and brown,
red and white and blue, mottled bruise,
battered and beaten and broken down,
reduced to animal, breeding and bleeding,
living and dying, victim in senseless causes,
all sweeping away from you your own life,
not as panorama or vista or far horizon,
but as dust into dustpan, ashes falling down.

The "occuptation", then, returns,
as pre-occupation, distracting and destroying,
stealing away all intimacy with familiars,
taking away probing sources of brewing magic:
By unseen hands, invisible hands, idle hands,
paws and claws hand us off, hand us over,
make us a handyman in a Job's Providence,
turn us into dustmen, garbage collectors,
gathering in ruins of our homes and lives --
outing a post-occupation, Sisyphus in labor.