Dealing with pain, poetically.

There's a famous statement about ignoring the bad guys
who come because they didn't come for the narrator,
the anonymous "me" who didn't need to worry
because that's not "my problem, he -- I assume -- declares

and I am scared, because I don't have to wait
for them to come for me, see:
my people by choice are the first people
to build hidden rooms and dig railroads
under the earth (metaphorically speaking)

and I don't have to wait for them to come for me
because if I spit into a cup what you will find
is that the European veneer runs thin, less than five
pure generations, not enough to keep a star
of my chest and to keep me off a trail
to the middle of nowhere, one I will remember
as one I was crying on, and I have to look up
one, or half, a branch on the family tree
to find someone who loves someone
in such a way that the anonymous they
has decreed: that branch should die.

I don't have to wait for them to come for me
because I am already ready to say that
even if there was no chance that the people they
find new exciting ways to decimate were not mine,
I would stand up and say something
because the blood that pumps from their heart
to their fist that might someday come for my lips
will blend in nicely once they mix,
like I said, the European veneer runs thin,
and I've never been one for waiting.