ADVERSARIES
When is it I am not an adversary? A mosquito
whines around my head while I'm in bed
at night, I'm an adversary-
someone notices from my speech I'm from the East
&
I become an adversary from the East to him,
he has heard of those eastern adversaries;
my tax dollars are adversary dollars, they put me in
an adversary position vis-a-vis the rest
of the world, it's a fact I have helped
to pacify, relocate, defoliate
&
terminate
as they say with extreme prejudice, in other words,
waste, words waste themselves like adversaries every day,
consider the "security" of "maximum security," actually not
a matter of being secure but maximally terrified
&
in
a hopeless position, with minimal security; or
"protective reaction," which protects nothing
least of all me,
&
is moreover a willful act
against imagined adversaries; but it's not necessary
to imagine adversaries, as when she says you are
reluctant or importunistic,
&
presto! I become
an adversary in the flesh, an aggressor within
the mind, perceiving the self in adversary
roles amidst scenes of carnage, rape, mutilation
&
other offenses I am guilty of, it's all the same,
words or bodies, one will Jead into the other,
in death as in love: when will I not be
an adversary? - if I were stabilized, would
terminated? - vulnerable, would I not
I not be
be searched out
&
destroyed? - receptive,
would I not be instructed, ordered
&
trained
for the adversary life?
Robert Vas Dias
