Poem: ’01
After Afghanistan, before Iraq. That gut feeling: 'Oh God NO!' Seeing America signing her death warrant, yoking her future to a reborn Cold War, running eagerly, insanely to death like a child across a highway. A stark vision of perpetual war come home the only way it could, as civil war. It hasn't happened yet: I'd say God forbid, but can even God forbid a path that has not yet been unchosen?
'01
There was a dream I had
it went like this:
black wings among the clouds
a fractured hiss
of gas escaping
in the broken night
and ghosts among the rubble
bone-slick white
there was no sun at all
it had been weeks
since rain had stirred the cracked
and oil-drowned peaks
of ruined gallerias,
churches, banks
the freeways choked with
rusting trackless tanks
and coldly glowing cancer
burned my eyes;
I walked as fast I could.
The haunted skies
resounded with the shrieks
of wounded jets
they spiralled down in fury.
I forget
the weeks I wandered,
lost and dazed
somehow I found a green
secluded grave
there lay a single headstone
sketched in chalk
'Here lies America the Great.
She trusted War.'