Burn them all:
The black, the white
The left, the right

Yes, burn them all!
They’re bad for our country:
The immigrants, the government
They’re bad for us, trust me.

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It’s the oil, right?
The oil is good.
We do it for Jesus!
(But we’ve just bombed his old neighborhood.)

Burn them all!
Spread more words of hate!
No time for rebellion
Since you start work at 8.

And it keeps burning:
The women, the men
(At last equal under the smoke,
The Beckys and Bens)

I’m pro-life,
(But no, not his.)
Let’s protect our people
But kill everyone else; it’s just how it is.

Burn the countries
That have the oil
Justify our means
Blood makes their soil.

Burn it all:
Except—one thing to say as the flames lick the steeple,
Stop caring about oil
Start caring about people.

I’m Kashmiri. 

I understand the language but don’t speak it 
Which sometimes makes me feel like a fraud. 

But when I visit Kashmir 
There’s this warm feeling inside my chest 
That blossoms slowly, like my smile 
It takes time to form. 

It’s a different feeling from home home,
My house in America,
Which is also beautiful.

Because this feeling’s unique.

When I’m in Kashmir,
I feel loved.
Nobody is banging red, white and blue drums at me 
On the way to the mosque
And telling me to go back to my country.
And pretty much everyone I see on the street
Looks just like me.

I look like them.
I eat the food.
I love the food!
But I avoid conversation.

I feel like a kind of observer.

But that’s fine.

For me,
Kashmir will always be
A place to remind me of where I come from
And that there are people that love me.
And that makes me feel just about as Kashmiri
As I actually am.

Convinced that their democracy 
Is the only democracy 

My brethren fall heavily into the rubble 
A reflection of my own clay, 
A memory of our shared fire. 

I miss the time when 
They were called the creative people. 
The kind people, 
The smart ones. 

Now they are resilient. 
They are brave. 
They are hopeful. 

We forget so often that
They are also human.

We forget
And we keep forgetting.

And who’s fault is that?

        Any plebeian half-brained dimwit should know that things labeled with “alcohol” generally should not be set on fire. On the bridge, however, which overlooks the murky brown waters of the city, lay many who were considerably more stupid than plebeian, half-brained dimwits, and therefore found it positively hilarious to set alcohol-labeled things on fire. I watched this from inside my penthouse as I read my new edition of Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, and I did find it mortifyingly symbolic– the literal burning of bridges. Perhaps this flame represented the way the rest of the world would go down: detached and without allies.

        Soon after the bridge incident, the deer came to my attention. Deer have two main natural predators: pumas and bacteria (e.g., disease). Humans had eradicated entirely the disease that hunted these beings, which would have been good for the pumas (since they’d have more food). The only issue was that humans had overhunted the pumas as well. I was a little more than miffed that, of all animals to be overpopulated, it was the deer. These foolish mammals did little more than eat, sleep, reproduce, and get entranced by the glare of headlights. Of course, I was foolish back then as well and could not see the irony of my irritation.
        One thing I learned about deer from this time is that they eat. A lot. Almost overnight, grass became an endangered species. After the deer had stripped the forests and prairies of their grasses, they headed for the urban areas. It was the most congested traffic I had ever seen. Millions—millions of deer would cross the roads, stampeding toward the last patch of grass left somewhere in a strip mall downtown. Then, the deer fell away as well, one by one.

        The deer were gone, and we soon realized that there was no more food for us to eat. Before we could fall into a full-fledged crisis, a brilliant researcher in the government suggested maximizing caloric intake through the processing of available conspecific tissues—cannibalism. Human farms were set up within the week, and the government ordered the “weak” from the population to be sent for the greater good. Instead of eating Carl’s Jr., people were now eating their neighbor, Carl. 
        The Sunday after the proposition, the newspaper front page cried out at me to “call your human farm today! Tours now open!” An article followed, calling for activism and to call the human farm and demand humane solutions. I picked up the phone and dialed the number, but not for activism. Instead, I booked a ticket for a tour.

        The people practically stampeded towards the tour bus. The tour guide looked like he’d been yelled at by his manager, although, to his credit, he still found it in himself to smile and say, “And to your left…!” I almost pitied him, a simple cog in a larger machine.
        He led us to the gift shop, where children crowded excitedly near the farm equipment on the display, which was not limited to tasers, a wide assortment of guns and ammunition, and different kinds of knives. The kids pressed their faces as close as they could to the “equipment,” and to them it seemed almost a pity that the glass was there at all. 
        Tourists shoved their cameras everywhere and anywhere they could, entranced by the process of creation. Their very being was being enabled before them—no other occasion called for photos quite like this one!
By the end of the tour, I had at least four too many arms of the meat they were selling. By my first bite, I realized that the meat didn’t taste quite the same as the meat we’d sacrificed—the kind we used to eat. By the second bite, I was satisfied. 

        I had never been satisfied before. Perhaps this was a part of how I became one with the stampede.

        On the way out of the building, the staff pulled participants in the tour aside for a “routine health screening,” a perk, I supposed, of being a part of the tour. 
        They ran tests on me, and I suspected nothing until I caught a glimpse of the technician’s screen. Instead of “blood pressure,” it showed my “caloric yield”—my eyes flitted around to the sides of the room for an escape. Taking note of the security personnel by every entrance and exit, I determined there was none. The clinical white light of the building hurt my eyes, and the smell of the meat from earlier on my breath made me nauseated.  
        I was reminded suddenly of the burning bridge I had seen all those weeks ago. Or was it months? Time seems like a nonlinear thing once you’re sure you are going to die. I wondered if that bridge had really meant something to me. Perhaps it had been symbolic in securing my fate of a lonely ending.

        I was led after that to a “farm”—a slaughterhouse. They had me kneel in front of the window that overlooked the sewage waters of Earth. I felt almost grateful to my two murderers in front of me; at least they allowed me to see the sky and water before my death.

        For the first time in a long time, I found it in me to use my voice. I was not a particularly religious person at all, but I had indeed changed drastically from my former personality, so I said:

“I will be avenged when you are all in hell.”

        The employees held a sharp tool parallel to my neck. They looked as if they wanted to laugh.

“Look around you,” one of them said. “Are we not already there?”

        And I looked once more at the green, polluted sky and the repulsive murkiness of the river. In the mushed-up colors of the sky, I could have sworn I saw some blue.

        The dim lighting of the slaughterhouse played colors on the window, and the corners of my lips curled up slightly with pleasure.

        What a beautiful day it is. It’s a shame I didn’t realize it sooner.

There’s this random office building across the Cinemark downtown.
Sometimes, when I go there,
I’ll watch a dumb movie at the theater,
Then tiptoe past glass windows of desk workers.
And if I’m with my friends, I might laugh at them,
Whiling away behind a screen
While we’re over here, doing whatever the hell we want.
When I’m alone, though, I might sympathize with them—
I feel tired just looking at their rat-raced faces.

After we sneak past the office, we might go to the parking garage behind that.
Or I might, depending on the day.
Then, I climb up the creepy, cobweb-filled stairwell
Illuminated by the occasional yellowing lightbulb.
After sprinting up the stairs, our quads burning, panting,
We make it to the roof.

There’s a random tennis court in the corner, but it’s locked.
If I’m with my friends, we climb on top of the generator and hop the fence of the court,
Just for the thrill of it,
Even though none of us have tennis rackets,
Or have even played tennis before.

If I’m alone, I just hang my legs off the edge of the building,
Facing the highway and the office in front of it
Watching the hurried taillights of Hondas and Acuras on the I-10
Go somewhere no one will ever care about.

I’ll probably breathe in the air, which is crisp when you’re so high up.
Then, I’ll look again at the office workers.
Back curled, staring soullessly into their computers,
Calculating stock or whatever it is adults do there.

My heart sort of twinges, then.
They’ve worked their whole lives to get to this point
Of mind-numbing slavery.

And I look at the Houston skyline
And foolishly, youthfully,
Am glad as hell that I’m not them.

It was roughly ten hours too early for Private First Class James C. Bartholomew to be marching. It was especially too early for Private First Class Bartholomew to be in the middle of the First Squad of the Third Platoon of C Company of the First Battalion of the 325th Regiment of the 107th Infantry Division of the 12th Army, and he intended to get out of there as soon as he could, which would be maybe a few more years, although that’s what he had told himself a few years ago, so he was most likely lying.
“Halt!” bawled the sergeant on the loudspeaker.
And James did, hut, two.

Of course, he would make it out of this situation. Maybe after he did, he would see the ugly grimacing face of his sergeant in a bar somewhere, and Sarge would say, “Lick my shoe” or “Kiss my ring” or something equally as distasteful and awkward, if not more, and, with great relish, James would say, “no.” Then he would walk out with the sight of the Sarge’s surprised face etched into his memory forever, and James would not have a care in the world. After that he might go to his house, which was sure to be quite large because James was a hard worker, so he’d have a steady job where all his coworkers loved him and didn’t call him “Plum” for his mutilated purple birthmark on his right cheek. His mother and siblings would greet him at the door. His dad would play catch with him in the yard, even though they were both adults, because that’s just the relationship they have. Plus he would never have to wear khaki ever again. Mediocrity and averageness. What a dream.

James snapped back to attention as Sarge began barking orders. And while I’m dreaming, James thought, I’d like to be president of the universe. 

Because that’s not what would happen now, is it, James? After he leaves the army, instead of a wealthy businessman, he’ll find himself a gutter rat, living in motels sometimes and, other times, on benches. He’ll wander the Los Angeles streets, wondering how life got this bad. Maybe he’ll reminisce about his childhood. He’s used to being a gutter rat. The bottom of the social hierarchy pyramid tends to do that. 
James never knew his father, and his mother–
Well, the memory of her shoes dangling above the frame of his vision would haunt him for years.
So. Gutter rats.
After reminiscing, he’ll probably get hungry, but there will be no food to eat and no money to buy it with (probably because he’d have spent it all on drugs to quell the PTSD).
And finally, at the end of the line, after sleeping on homeless-proof benches and begging at every stoplight in a billion-meter vicinity, he’ll get picked up by those crazy gestapo agents of America everyone’s been talking about because his mom was some kind of brown. 

Maybe a little more than a few years in the army.