poem | Ali Alizadeh
OVERLAND 189
summer 2007
ISBN 978-0-9775171-6-9
published 21 November 2007
Culture and Its Terrors
Similes, nature analogies, never
so apt to term the pitfalls, assaults upon
the soul’s integrity. Imagine
sinking into depths deadlier than swamps
twisting through the spiral
of angry, lacerating waves. Yes, water
absolutely the right metaphor. Element
of emotion, sucking the body down a well
of killer sentiments. It’s not simply
nostalgia, but a new obsession. See
the pride, revived rituals of we
mere drifters who cannot wriggle our
insomnia-infested bodies out of the claws
of old world nightmares. Call us
tribal, ethnic, quaint, exotic
… dancers?! Somnambulists actually. Wish
we could sleep without the real threat
of drowning in the whirlpool of resurgent
displaced passion. You’ve seen us
flap incongruous flags, celebrate mismatched
dates. It’s not ‘community’. It’s the epitaph
of what we left to the mercy of dying elders in lands
with bleeding soil, inflamed air and blackened
lakes. Yes, the substance of the fierce vortex
of ‘minority ethnicity’ is muddy, tar
poisoned beyond refinement. But don’t lose sight
of the tornado of your ‘dominant culture’. Maybe
sandstorm would be more adequate. Your
nationalism, allegiance fetish
threaten to bury uniqueness with the sands
of stifling self-satisfaction. I’ve seen you
wave your garish flag, grunting anthems
that ‘define’ you. Your power to sequester
others’ lands, then call this ‘progress’,
the cruelty of a pernicious hurricane. And
your winds try to suck me up, have me
twist, submit to the cycles of your ‘national
psyche’. You want me as your ‘grateful
immigrant’, ‘integrate’, in short have
my bones bitten by the teeth of your storm
in the name of assimilation? Calling this
‘limbo’; dull euphemism. ‘Medieval torture’
melodramatic. So I’ve resorted to natural
disaster metaphors: Mother Nature’s blights
complement Father Culture’s terrors.
© Ali Alizadeh
Overland 189 – summer 2007, p. 71
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