I wrote this poem to those Florida fratboys who threw the Mekong Delta party, where the men dressed like GI's and the women dressed like Viet prostitutes. The first time, they claimed that they didn't mean to offend any one, they didn't know it would be offensive. The next year, they did it again. No Offense You struck in the same place twice igniting homes that you call hootch twisters of black smoke curl upwards smogging the glass ceiling No offense World globes bought with daddy's credit card Your pale clammy hands play cut and paste with geography, paper dolls on exotic hookers, puberty hard-on with little penises like struggling flags No offense It's okay that you're a bigot cuz your girlfriend is Miss Saigon and your best friend is the same color as Wesley Snipes and your affirmative action affection got both of them through the locked and monitered gates of your neighborhood No offense It should be no surprise that stray bullets/ civil war/ diseased bamboo stakes / agent orange / charred homeland legless veterans turned beggars/ exploited Vietnamese women is all a big motherfucking party to you No offense Ladies love heroes in uniform, come to liberate them from footbinding foes, greased yellowbrown pimps with your economic downfall at their fingertips nightmares moving into American dream's neighborhood No offense You wake up from dreams of silk cocooned prostitutes send away for exotic mail order girlfriends pregnant with assimilation dying dramatically in your arms No offense is your only defense. So lay down your sandbags like nameless lumped carcasses pledge to your brothers as I will pledge to mine because we are coming for you We are asking Lady Liberty to take us to America we have come to mispronounce your names chain your hollow Bruce Lee imitation hi-yaaaa to your throat all you want it won't save you those Chinese characters on the front of your shirt which you can't read tells me your ass is mine that white skin that has meant individual and good guy and innocent and get out of jail free will not be honored by us we will come with gifts of grenades wrapped in banana leaves bottles of wine filled with agent orange and a dozen long stemmed red roses dipped in napalm we have arms made of machetes and songs that whistle like bullets through the monsoon So make yourself dream through beer and see yourself as an eagle in the mirror we will come when you are drunk with yourselves we have come to clip the wings of vultures You wanted a Mekong Delta party So party on as your frat house is bombarded the roof is on fire the roof is on fire you will dodge bullets on the dance floor your parents will be chained to sewing machines to make your uniforms and costumes your brothers will turn against you your sisters will become prositutes you will starve you will get malaria you will not get a job tanks will roll into your nehigborhood your children will play with shell casings in crater filled suburbs there will be nothing left there will be nothing left after we come for you there will be nothing left no offense. |