Tall Poppies

Rwandan State radio said cut down
the tall trees. Listeners heard kill
your Tutsi neighbor.
Dog whistles, dangerous as poetry.
When someone says something like
Trees that grow taller
than the forest will be trimmed by the gale,
they are offering the terms
of your surrender.
500s, BCE, Tarquin the Proud
found his boy busy playing
tee-ball with seed heads
where their garden grew the tallest poppies,
and taught him that, one day he’d
have to lop the heads
of men from whose seed insurrection might
flower. Jump cut, poppies flush
London Tower’s moat
ruddy in remembrance of England’s blood
shed since the Opium Wars
when Brits by lethal
persuasion peddled addiction for all
the tea in China. The drug
to start with and stay
with, Purdue Pharma called OxyContin,
at once slogan and decree.
The bitter end of
palliative care assured as millions
like my dad lined up to meet
their makers thumbing
morphine drips like jumpy kids with click-pens.
’Merican justice hums kill
them before they grow,
and poisons the terroir of voting wards,
school boards and precincts, and treats
blooms as invasive
products of graft. Playing like suburban
dads, Israeli colonels claim
they’re “mowing the lawn.”