How To Create An Enemy

by Sam Keen

Start with an empty canvas.
Sketch in broad outline the forms of
men, women, and children.

Dip into the unconsciousness well of your own
disowned darkness
with a wide brush and strain the strangers
with the sinister hue of the shadow.

Trace onto the face of the enemy the greed,
hatred, carelessness you dare not claim as
your own.

Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.

Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,
fears that play through the kaleidoscope of
every infinite heart.

Twist the smile until it forms the downward
arc of cruelty.

Strip flesh from bone until only the
abstract skeleton of death remains.

Exaggerate each feature until man is
metamorphosized into beast, vermin, insect.

Fill in the background with malignant
figures from ancient nightmares - devils,
demons, myrmidons of evil.

When your icon of the enemy is complete
you will be able to kill without guilt,
slaughter without shame.

The thing you destroy will have become
merely an enemy of God, an impediment
to the sacred dialectic of history.

I found this poem at the beginning of Juan Gomez-Jurado's international bestseller The Moses Expedition (2007). Perhaps more moving than the poem itself was the author's plea at the end of the acknowledgments... "Dear reader, I don't want to end this book without requesting a favor. Go back to the beginning of these pages and reread the poem by Sam Keen. Do it until you memorize every word. Teach it to your children; send it to your friends. Please." I trust that neither author will mind that I chose to share their words here.