Weapons of Mass Destruction

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First, you build a civilization on the corpses of conquered natives
Nobody you associate with minds because
Anyone, who isn’t indigenous believes that natives aren’t as smart 
Or as strong 
Or as important 
As you are

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Then you import other humans to be your slaves
So you can work them to death
Without feeling guilty
Because you’ve already established that dark-skinned people 
Are expendable
And since they are in a foreign land and forbidden from speaking their languages
They are all the more malleable

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Then you drain the resources from the land
Until you run out, conquer and steal stuff
From other countries
And you sacrifice the poor of your nation
By making them into soldiers to fight for profit;
Young, desperate young men, that you’d have to waste money on if they 
Didn’t go out and kill for you

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Eventually, you drop bombs on multiple countries, to create conflict
Between them til the people there have no choice but to flee
But you block the borders
And they can’t come in because they might be the 
Terrorists you created by repeatedly killing off their families, or,
By manipulating their rulers into bombing each other

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And you make sure that the people of your nation
Are constantly fighting each other for the little that is left over
After you’ve taken the lion’s share
And you rank everyone according to skin color and religion
So they know exactly where to stand in line and who to blame

And you keep digging up things like oil and uranium
That pollute the air and water
First you dig up stuff on the reservations
Where you stuck the natives who weren’t killed off
Then you start digging wherever you choose
So the people, who may or may not be native, drink polluted water
And get sick but can’t afford doctors and drugs
To counteract the toxins because you don’t provide healthcare
And you allow the pharmaceutical corporations to charge without regulation

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You make sure to blame the teachers
Who are tasked with educating children
Whose brains and bodies have been poisoned by the toxins 
That you allowed to flow into the water and air
And you starve and pervert the educational system
While telling the public that it is “flush with cash”

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And while you’re at it, you flush the poor and working class out of their houses
And onto the streets where you shoot them after they’ve
Gone crazy from being homeless
Or were already crazy, but, since you close the psychiatric hospitals and halfway houses

and took away all of the jobs they might have been able to do,
They wander around and point cell phones or electronic cigarettes at the police,
Who shoot them and then lie, say they were in fear for their lives
Cause if they’re black or brown
You believe that their lives are not worth saving

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But you do promise jobs
To anyone who is willing to build walls
To prevent immigrants from crossing your borders
Even though they are coming because 
You’ve exploited their resources and corrupted their governments
For a century or more, 
And forced them to work for pennies 
In factories that you built in their countries
So you wouldn’t have to pay minimum wages and benefits
To your own citizens

And you employ your citizens to lay pipefuls of oil
Extracting by fracking or sucking it from under the oceans
And pump it under rivers that provide drinking water to millions
Who will sicken or die without homes, healthcare, jobs
Or an education that might prepare them to organize and fight back

But, despite your efforts to suppress, bully, enslave, rob, displace, gentrify,

starve, exploit, extinguish, humiliate, brainwash, torture or maim,
We will
Because we open our eyes
Because we can see injustice 
Without being taught
 

Kimi Sugioka is a poet, songwriter and educator who earned an MFA in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. In the past she has been a poetry slam winner, a founding member of the woman’s musical and spoken-word group “Bloodtest,” has one book published by Manic D Press (The Language of Birds), and one recording of her songs. Influenced by, among others, the beat poets and poets of color and grit, she attempts to take measure of the world through the lens of a utopian educator in a dystopian system, a bi-cultural woman of color, and a single mother.