Are you one of us?
Tell me right now, are you one of us?
We look after our own, and we would look after you too, if you were one of us.

Do you think like us, do you act like us, are you one of us?
Do we share the same beliefs, are you one of us?
Do we share the same enemies, are you one of us?

It’s hard for me to tell if you are one of us.
Sometimes I think you are one of us,
But then sometimes I think that you are not really one of us.

You don’t really look like one of us,
You don’t really dress like one of us,
And you certainly don’t talk like one of us.

But on the other hand, you seem to think like one of us,
You seem to share the same beliefs as one of us,
And some of us think that you are one of us.

So, won’t you tell me right now if you are one of us?
I’d really like to know if you were really one of us,
So I could treat you like one of us.

*******

One of the more frustrating aspects of contemporary culture is the way that it has made situations of edge induced cohesion even more common than they already have been in my life. Given that the name of my blog is Edge Induced Cohesion, it is little surprise that such issues where the overwhelming hostility that exists between two camps forces people to work together and think of themselves as being on the same side even where they might not naturally unify in the absence of a common enemy that they hate far more than their allies have been common enough in my life to be recognized and commented on from time to time. Nevertheless, the sort of gatekeeping that exists and the sort of pressure that one feels to be a part of one of two hostile camps is not something that I personally enjoy, for even though I can certainly be ferocious in my hostility towards enemies, it is not my habit to seek a fight.

The inspiration to write this particular poem is really two-fold. One of them is the reflection I have taken about the toxic public discourse concerning the song “Try That In A Small Town,” which reflects a genuine and often ignored perspective within the people of the United States and reflects a rather deep cultural divide that flares up frequently over the division of America into two hostile camps. If there is clearly one side that I am far closer to than the other, I have never found either side to be very welcome to me personally, and have always been irritated at being somewhat in between the two camps and never able to fully belong or feel comfortable in either. That does not prevent something like that from happening at some point, but there are certain aspects of who I am as a person that have not made either of the two hostile camps within our society a perfect fit, even though my own temperament and worldview are far closer to one side than to the other.

The other inspiration for this poem came from a conversation with a dear Persian friend of mine who commented on a particular genre of Persian poetry where every line of a poem shares the same refrain. As someone who has written many poems over the course of my life, in many different styles, I thought it would be worthwhile to try this sort of insistent refrain, for it suited the sorts of things I had in mind for a couple of poems. This is one of them, and there is another one of them that I hope to write at some point that has a different refrain but the same style, and I will see if that one offers a different feel of a poem from this one. Whether or not this poem is to your tastes, it is at least, by my standards, a successful experiment in a new form and that is enough for me to add it to my toolbox of poetic styles to use when a phrase offers worth when it is repeated.