location

How do I find my place in a country
where peace-making looks like war-mongering
communication is an excuse for marketing
and conservation is a gimmick for consumerism?

Yet I cannot define my very self
without this country; the location of
my birth, my nourishment, my starvation
I cannot renounce my place no matter
how hard I have to look to find it

This country is crumbling because of its
founding fallacy– that it is valuable to
separate self from community, that a society
can thrive while idealizing individuality

Maybe there is an essential part of my spirit
that is essentially and only me; but the rest
of it is built on everything and everyone around me
I am already standing in my place in this country.