Realistically Imagined
Q: Are you ready, inmate?
A: Came fully unprepared. Can’t wait.
Q; Please, state your name for the record.
A: Nothing’s changed, still a proper noun.
Q: How old are you?
A: As old as everyone else in my age.
Q: Married?
A: Like a necklace around her neck.
Q: And her name is?
A: Too intoxicating to sing it out.
Q: Children?
A: Three on earth and two in heaven.
Q: Siblings?
A: I’m their fettered brother.
Q: Any terror-suspect among them?
A: They’re all Muslim, if that fits the bill?
Q: Are you being sarcastic?
A: Are you being serious?
Q: Where does your sister live?
A: Leave her alone. Let her live.
Q: Have you spoken to your brother, lately?
A: Why? What happened? Is he alright?
Q: How did your daughter die?
A: Waiting for me to kiss her goodbye,
Q: And did she get her last kiss?
A: No, the razor wires caught my lips.
Q: Are you afraid of the dark?
A: Only if it makes me hide from the light.
Q: So, you can be a chicken at times, can’t you?
A: We both came from a fertilized egg, didn’t we?
Q: Are you pro-choice or pro-life?
A: I choose to live and live to choose.
Q: What’s your favorite color?
A: The color of blood before its awful shedding.
Q: Do you like the moon?
A: So long it’s not colonized.
Q: Have you been psychoanalyzed?
A: Three times, but she couldn’t take it
anymore. Poor analyst, my voice
inside her head left her traumatized.
Q: Are you a follower or a leader?
A: I follow my own leads.
Q: Are you the bow? the arrow? the archer?
A: I’m the target.
Q: Do you know how to use a weapon.
A: Of course, but sometimes the loaded
metaphors I use backfire on me.
Q: Do you hate your enemies?
A: Hate is bad for global warming; good
for war industrialists, which I’m not.
Q: Do you believe your enemies have right to exist?
A: Do my enemies believe I have the right
to believe they have the right to exist?
Q: How would you assess US-foreign policy in the Middle East?
A: Too foreign, all west, no middle, no east.
Q: But do you believe peace is still possible?
A: So long as the “I” isn’t God, and the Devil isn’t
every-last-one of “them”.
Q: How did the Criminal Justice System work for you.
A: Systemic: no crime by me, no justice for me.
Q: Now tell us how you wish to die.
A: Serving a fresh glass of rain
to the last rose under siege.
Q: Finally, are you a terrorist?
A: Why? Did the sun rise from the west?
Q: Any more questions, inmate?
A: No thanks, you can go now.
Shukri 6/22/22.
Notes from Shukri 
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