She Asked Me If I Was A Government Agent Poem by Khristian E. Kay

She asked me if I was a government agent
I was taken aback by that
I mean how do you answer a question like that?
Truthfully?
I answered as any good agent would
incredulous and through evasionary tactics
I answered question for question quid pro quo
good interrogation technique or
so I’ve heard
“Aren’t we all? ”

And I did not mean to sound facitious
for we live Stalinesque in our freedom our choice
I thought about how we reward people
for informing on others
we provide them with excuses or choices
And it is not about the truth because
we reward as long as there is information
right – wrong; fictituous, or otherwise derived
We reward our children for telling on their peers
for tattling, narcing – we used to condemn them
for that practice now we reward them for turning in
their friends, we tell them that these friends
‘really are not their friends anyway’
We tell them ‘your friend in the next room,
he told us all about you, that it was your idea
– now who should we believe them or you? ’
We ask them about what their parents do
or say or drink or what books their parents read who
their parents see and what shows are they watching
we reward them for this information
‘You are a good citizen’ we say and we hand them
a certificate a star a scholarship that says so
‘Be a good neighbor’ and watch
Watch your block and tell us the going ons
tell us about those two guys who share that house
you know which one or the mixed family on the corner
or those foreign people who lives above the store
and especially… especially tell us about your teachers
‘Are they good citizens? Tell us what you see, what
You hear what you think you heard everything
anything - make up something if you need to
because ‘you want to be a good citizen
don’t you? ’


She asked me if I was a government agent
‘You know’ I thought ‘I like her plan this plan’
asking everyone upfront straight away
if they were agents of deception
I thought I would do that should do that too
ask everyone I meet
“Are you now or have you ever been a government agent? ”
But I do not like being lied to nor
do I care to put people in that position
having to lie

If I don’t ask then you won’t have to lie to me

She said if I was a government agent I would have to tell her
Truthfully
because she had asked me
because she was a law abiding citizen
because that is the law

I asked her when the last time it was
that our government had abided by the law

©2005 All rights reserved