{"id":12041,"date":"2014-02-22T12:22:46","date_gmt":"2014-02-22T17:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=12041"},"modified":"2014-02-23T14:28:37","modified_gmt":"2014-02-23T19:28:37","slug":"sos-an-american-poet-is-waiting-to-be-rescued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2014\/02\/sos-an-american-poet-is-waiting-to-be-rescued.html","title":{"rendered":"SOS: An American Poet Is Waiting to Be Rescued"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div id=\"attachment_12050\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/western-movie-in-hong-kong-e1393087895690.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12050\" data-attachment-id=\"12050\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2014\/02\/sos-an-american-poet-is-waiting-to-be-rescued.html\/western-movie-in-hong-kong\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/western-movie-in-hong-kong-e1393087895690.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"200,127\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Western Movie in Hong Kong? [Gary Lee-Nova]\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;&lt;font size=3&gt;Image: Gary Lee-Nova&lt;\/font&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/western-movie-in-hong-kong-e1393087895690.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/western-movie-in-hong-kong-e1393087895690.jpg\" alt title=\"Image by Gary Lee-Nova\" width=\"200\" height=\"127\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12050\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-12050\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><font size=1>Image by Gary Lee-Nova<\/font><\/p><\/div> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.williamcodymaher.com\/\">Cody Maher<\/a>, expat American poet and world traveler living in Heidelberg, writes in an email message that he was sitting around &#8220;watching countries go to the dogs feeding the people nothing but lies&#8221; when it occurred to him that &#8220;the only safe place one day might be international waters.&#8221; This must have been before the Somali pirates stuck their noses in, but his poem makes more sense today than ever.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>INTERNATIONAL WATERS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I wanted to run away to a country<br \/>\nWhere people weren&#8217;t running to get out<\/p>\n<p>I arrived at one country<br \/>\nAnd I was greeted by a soldier out of uniform<br \/>\nbut well armed<\/p>\n<p>In another country<br \/>\nA doctor offered me what medicine he had left<\/p>\n<p>In another country<br \/>\nA priest was hurriedly packing away a cross<br \/>\nthree wise men and a few lambs in straw<\/p>\n<p>Another country<br \/>\nLooked good from a distance<br \/>\nBut when I got up close<br \/>\nI couldn&#8217;t bear to look<\/p>\n<p>In another country<br \/>\nA man was fighting for his life at a bad<br \/>\nrate of exchange<\/p>\n<p>In another country<br \/>\nDust was being kicked up to cover the dirt<\/p>\n<p>In another country<br \/>\nA document  was gatherering signatures at an agreed upon price<\/p>\n<p>While another country<br \/>\nFought back its tears<br \/>\nWith the gas<\/p>\n<p>Another country<br \/>\nWas cleaning out its cage<br \/>\nWhen I stepped in by mistake<\/p>\n<p>Another country<br \/>\nWas advertising the country next to it at reduced rates<\/p>\n<p>While another country<br \/>\nWas putting sand in its pockets to soak up the blood<\/p>\n<p>Another country<br \/>\nWas in the middle of a transaction under a hood<\/p>\n<p>Another country<br \/>\nHad its blinds down so I couldn&#8217;t see in<\/p>\n<p>While another country<br \/>\nKept seeing things<br \/>\nThat still weren&#8217;t there<\/p>\n<p>Another country<br \/>\nWas putting itself back together<br \/>\nFrom two rotten halves<\/p>\n<p>While another country<br \/>\nSpoke eloquently about what kind of a country<br \/>\nit had dreamed it would be one day<\/p>\n<p>Another country<br \/>\nExcused itself and continued to fight off flies<\/p>\n<p>While another country<br \/>\nCarried a woman<br \/>\nOver a threshold<br \/>\nInto a dark hole<\/p>\n<p>Another country<br \/>\nWas rolling out the red carpet<br \/>\nAs heads rolled behind the scenes<\/p>\n<p>I waited in international waters to be rescued.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>&#8212; Cody Maher<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cody Maher, expat American poet and world traveler living in Heidelberg, writes in an email message that he was sitting around &#8220;watching countries go to the dogs feeding the people nothing but lies&#8221; when it occurred to him that &#8220;the only safe place one day might be international waters.&#8221; This must have been before the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-literature","7":"category-political-culture","8":"entry","9":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-38d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}