When Your Country Is Not Your County

a meeting of 20th century colonial powers — a poem

Cut up a map
Serve on a plate
Pass it around
What will they take?

Men at high tea
Men at noon lunch
Men hard at work
Getting quite drunk

Carving out borders
Slicing their lands
into disorder
Blood on their hands

Feasting on conquest
Feasting on profit
Feasting on progress
Whose land was it?

Breaking ethics
While breaking bread
Hide all the crumbs
How many dead?

Order dessert
Let revolts cook
Let them get burnt
No one will look

Men with ties
Men with morals
Men with lies
Are any loyal

to the idealists
they once claimed to be?
I only see imperialists
blind to their hypocrisy