BIG PICTURE  

It keeps changing, but only because what we’re told
is what they’re told to tell us, those who read the cards
and tiptoe in their crisp suits across the abyss of everyday air
waves, like oracles looking over our heads, at the words
projected ex cathedra through cyberspace
by the invisible ones who know their history
is a curtain call, further and further away
from the stage, like our understanding of the dead
languages we can still read that have no echoes. 

              _________________

It’s true, though we hate to admit it. 
Market Forces are totally helpless
against bad weather.  Tsunamis
rise up and gallop over the landscape.
Volcanos blow their tops.  The earth
itself quakes and shudders under mud
-slide and rock-fall in punishing rain. 

But if we took those MF’s firmly in hand
they might be able to do something
about the air that makes it necessary
to put vending machines on the streets
where citizens can attempt to prevent
asphyxia by renting a couple of minutes
face to face with an oxygen mask,
or about lakes that have become so
clear,  all the way down to schist
and sand, you can see the absolute
nothing that’s left inside them,
unthinkable, and such a startling
blue, the color of Sani-Flush.

              _________________

The consensus now is that too much Democracy interferes
with the purity of Warfare.  And no one, or very few, remember
how the stones came back to live in the fields, in the river,
after the battlements fell into disrepair
and the long campaigns came home to rest
in their paper scrolls.  It’s not so much that the past
is repeating itself, it’s that we keep telling the same tales
taller, about progress and sacrifice and of course heroes
who can save anything, even daylight, or time,
or ice from the inroads of Summer Wind,
and will keep every thing as it is now forever.

              _________________

It is terrible to be chosen, by Him, by Destiny.
Sooner or later you will have to kill,
or be killed by, those who were also told
they would inherit what’s left of the Earth, after
the prophecies have been fulfilled.   

              _________________

Pre-emptive.  Shock and Awe.  Full Spectrum Dominance.  The Axis
of Evil pokes up out of the ground right in the middle
of a Presidential Briefing in the Rose Garden.  It looks like
a May Pole, or a drive shaft connecting big wheeled Capital
machines across the globe, and heads of State who listen only to God. 

              _________________

Fire-bursts and blood-smoke, nearly unrecognizable
body parts in the cratered streets, and flies,
lots of flies that rise up in sizzling clouds
when the starved dog packs arrive, tear apart
the calf with no front legs, the singed chickens,
then sniff at a small boy and his sister, curled up
in a doorway with neat holes in their skulls.

           _________________

The dead wake up for us in a dream.  Their eyes
have the eerie transparency of  sunlit flame
but when we hear what they came to say
we know it’s already too late. 

* * *

OCCUPIED

there was always lots to do
and we made sure we kept
ourselves busy.  in the end
we wore out our boots
and our welcome.  shots were fired
from the shadows.  there was no time
for questions about our mission,
the wisdom of our smart bombs
cluster bombs and the mother of all
bombs that lit up the night
sky like New Year’s Eve or The New World
Order.  and it was never easy
identifying our assailants.  they
look the same, in their rag hats
and belted robes, as the others
who commonly inhabit this
region, and we, of course, have nothing
to go on but our training
and a highly developed ability
to suspect things.  that’s what we use
as a guide for our mortars, missiles, assault
rifles and commando raids.  what we know
is this: it is absolutely imperative that we return
to our gated communities well before dark,
and that we take appropriate measures,
never to put civilians at risk, if we ever
discover who they are.  we burned
all day and the nights were cold.  no one
seemed to be in control and we lost
a lot of time surrounded by dangerous  
indecision. this went on for months,
then, after the first wave hit the coast,
debris from the shattered monuments
floated among the drowned animals. 
now half the country’s under water.
we will hold out in concrete bunkers
deep in the hills, for years, for as long as it takes
our superiors to decide how else they can use us.