ask not what your country can do for you ask if your country is your country ask if your country belongs to your country folk ask if your country is addicted to blood ask if your country is addicted to forgetting ask if your country is an oil & power fiend ask if your country shakes at night starving for bodies if bodies mean your country keeps on being your country in the same ol’ ways ask if your country was built of stolen land and stolen breath, if democracy is a chain tight as skin around your neck ask if your comfort means elsewhere someone is burying a daughter ask if your comfort means round the corner a man is dead cause a cop mistook his body for a gun ask if your comfort means broke schools & amp; food deserts on the other side of town ask if your new apartment used to belong to someone who couldn’t afford to look like you, ask yourself if all the things you are scared to admit are shovels slowly filling up a brown boy’s throat.
Danez Smith, “Principles” http://www.danezsmithpoet.com/a-poem-principles/
