Chatterbox: Inkwell

Manzanar Poem..... This is a poem I wrote yesterday about the War Relocation Center Manzanar in Owen's Valley, California. If you haven't been there, you should go. Please tell me what I should change in this poem. It doesn't halfway convey the essence of that place, doesn't halfway show why I cried the whole time. So if you say it's great and nothing else, I will pi you. *3.14....* Just kidding. I will pie you. *splat* Tell me what I could make better, please!!!

What have we done to them, we who dwell

Wherever we may please;

What have we done to them, they who came

From the lands beside the seas?

What have we done to them, we who chose

Our safety at their cost;

What have we done to them, they who spent

Their lives on what they lost?

What have we done to them? That should be told

With rage and shame and tears

We snatched them from their well-earned homes

From prejudice and fears.

They called this place Manzanar, made it home

All dust and wind and sun

They planted their gardens and nursed the trees

And made their rivers run.

We banned their religion, said Shinto

Was outlawed for the fight

Ignoring the First Ammendmant that

Forbid us to take their right.

We said they were willing, convinced ourselves

That we could do no wrong

And we had our way because they were weak

And we, the tyrants, were storng.

We will remember you, though time grows long

Remember your sacrifice in verse and song.

There are a bunch of things I don't know how to fix. :P Here's a list of my problems:

1) In the second stanza, "safety" should be more like security or peace of mind, but I don't know how to fit it in.

2) At the end of the second stanza, I want to convey more the sense that we took their lives, their livelihoods, from them, more than that they were lost.

3) The third stanza somehow sounds cheezy, but I don't know how to fix it. If you want to rewrite it, take a stab at it and welcome.

4) I don't like the second line of the fifth stanza. It was the only way I could think of to make the rhyme and keep the rhythm, but it sounds forced. And it was.

5) In the sixth stanza, I don't want to convey that they were weak, merely that the government overpowered them. We, America, were tyrants, but it wasn't that they were helpless.

6) In the last line, I don't like the word sacrifice. That implies willingness. It's the wrong word, but I can't find a better one. And it messes up the rhythm.

7) Oh, and I need a title. My titles are usually the Emily Dickenson sort - the first line. If you're good at that, throw one at me. Pretty please. Soon I'll have to start imitating Dickenson even more and just give them numbers. :P:P:P:P

Between these and the ones I'm overlooking (and goodness knows they're there) this might as well be a comunity project. :P Whether you want to tweak it or buldoze it and start over, please give it a try. At the moment I can do nothing more with it. It'll be hard for those of you who haven't been there. I've got to write something better, but I think this has potential. I hope. :P Oh, and for a while I toyed with the ideas of adding these lines after every stanza. Tell me what you think of that, too. 

Our brothers, our sisters, they should have been named

But we trapped them there, to America's shame.

I'm not sure what I think of those, so I took them out entirely. Thank you for your insight and help.

-EH the increasingly desperate over her inability to fix her own miserable poem. :(