[Newspoetry] Homeland Security: a misnomer

[DL Emerick]

Homeland Security

The psychology of the war on terror,
a frightening for fearing the unknown,
which is always the future yet to be,
and thus aims at stopping the future,
the willingness to explore the novel,
the willingness to find oneself
not among the familiar of the past,
but among the uncannily familiar,
because it has changed somehow.

You find this fear in the labels,
cast like spells over the mind,
creating Pavlovian circuits,
of bells ringing, alarms sounding,
learned behaviors, but no learning.

Homeland security, for example,
is not about the land at all,
for the terrorists do not deserts,
they have not even attacked homes,
or houses of any shape or make.

They attack high value symbols,
the heart of the financial class.

It is no wonder, as a result,
that the Homeland Security groups
were unready for a simple disaster,
that happened not to a point,
but to a region full of homes.

Yet, there was the blaming Bush,
likening Katrina to terrorism,
having previously likened it
to the sad war against fascism,
when a much more apt analogy
was the long war against piracy.