Kafka at the Airbase

I try to avoid posting my poems on this blog, largely because I feel that they deserve to be seen or heard in other places, while this is more of a space for ancillary writing. But - in the hopes that it might send you to check out Kate Fox's 'Poetry as it Happens' blog , where much of the work is better than this, I present below my effort (tweaked slightly) for yesterday's 'Write a Poem About the News Day.'

Kafka at the Airbase

It's education they're engaging in at Bagram:
teaching Afghans it's not 'Kafkaesque' but 'Kafkan'
when they pull you in and strip you of your kaftan,

stress-position you and ask you what you have planned
in a language that you barely understand;
when the evidence from you that they demand

is never really properly explained;
when they never tell you why you've been detained,
and you never get the chance to be arraigned;

no jury, no defence, will be arranged,
even though the C-i-C's been changed:
the guards change, but the Castle stays the same.