Funded by my participation My vote My idleness My overconsumption My silence My allegiance to mega-corporations Branding myself Losing myself Forgetting my purpose Remembering the price For what it’s worth My acceptance of exploitation for affordability My complicity with patriarchy My movie ticket purchasing Kill them Save us My normalization of trauma culture My need to impose my beliefs as fact By force when necessary NECESSARY The coltan My smartphone My data My wedding ring My diamonds My lack of diversification beyond these borders My all-inclusive resort Why would I leave? My carelessness in geopolitics and foreign policy the support of my government my church My god My acceptance of inflation My bank My taxes My ignorance God I blamed them. But There’s Blood on my hands. My cooperation as an arms investor Has extended well beyond my reach.
I wanted to write a solution-based poem to acknowledge the times we’re in. To reverse engineer war looking under its hood is the approach I thought would be best. Nobody considers war a problem until lives are lost, but we empower war every day. We’re living in a time in which we are largely manipulated by practically everyone to take a stand against a “they” or “them” and it’s “us” who are righteous. This fragments and polarizes society building a societal tolerance to war. I don’t want to overexplain art but remember that we vote every single day with our time, attention, money emotions, etc. We make investments in ideas, beliefs, tools, corporations, and institutions that do not have our best interest. Silence, health, love, competence, and happiness can sometimes be the best protest. We can all OPT-OUT, resist pointing the finger, and look within.
