oems to be Taken in the Event of War

by
The Peacemonger

 

Opposition

The opposite of collateral damage is a family meal
The opposite of a love song is a smart bomb
The opposite of the truth is a press briefing
The opposite of peace is US Foreign Policy
The opposite of love making is arms dealing
The opposite of revenge is forgiveness
The opposite of a deadline is a lifeline
The opposite of us is not them. Them is us.

The First Casualty

On the day before Day One
The rumour was attacked
The palace leveled.
False alarm.
Though there were dead
They were not the dead
The high card had not been cut.
Months later, while the dust settled, rose
And settled again,
The diggers went deeper,
And found
A rotting corpse, killed instantly
In the first rain of fire
Dental records confirmed
It was the Truth.

The Gulf that Lies Between Us

When some mother’s son
Exercising remote control
In the cockpit womb
Of a defecating B-52
Murders a mother
And her virgin daughter
Running, stunned
Hand in hand
Down the smoking Baghdad street
They are only side defects
In the Bushmen’s precise apocalypse.
They melt away
Out of sight
Of the video show
Busy scratching the surface
Turning a blind eye
As the sacred chain
Womb unto womb
Explodes, mere pricked balloons
Right then, somewhere up ahead
Unto us, a daughter is not born
A princess of peace
Or a son
Who does not pull his trigger
Or hi-jack futures
But sews together again
The many severed hands.

Briefly

“Good day, gentle men. There will be no question.
Of the 349 oil fields that have so far surrendered
Only nine are experiencing a flammable ignitive situation.
Of the unknown number of civilians slaughtered to date
Only a few are still burning
While three, perhaps four, have been attributed
To spontaneous combustion.”

Slow Guns

Long before the deadline, drawn in oily sand
Was crossed and
Coalition had been dieted down to just ‘two or less’
The slow guns were inflated, primed
Then beamed off into thin air.
A shock and awe missive
Launched from a CNNical TV tube
Landed on deafened ears
Infomercials pushing Hearts and Minds massages
Caused mass deconstruction.
Back home,
Around the Friendly Fire
The anchors-away! men warmed their microphones,
Declared the liberation shit-con a thumbs up disaster
The daily imprinters, Times on their hands, bringing up the rear end
Reported an envelope filled with suspicious oxymorons
(Wrapped in faded Resolutions
To prevent Collateral Damage)
Had been discovered
Hidden under a press podium
Holy War, Smart Bomb, Embedded Journalist

In the Butcher Shop

The butcher is a family man
From out of his meat and his wife’s
They have carved another generation
Never, they hope, to be served at
Death’s great feast, which is war.

The butcher’s knife is amoral
It eviserates without imagination
Removing first the head,
the memory of fields and farmyards
Then the tongue.

The butcher knows, in his guts,
That some meat must die
So that other meat may live free
This is not hard to digest
It is simply how he puts meat on the table.

Each day, on a clean slate
The butcher’s bloody work begins
And, as a blood red sun sets,
The cold water comes and washes away
The evidence of a job well done.

Prescription

For Mister George W Bush, Casa Blanca, Washington.
Take two aspirations (the little white ones) and lie down.
If no change of heart by dawn’s early light, call in sick to the stomach.
Please.

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