1.
It was four in the morning here
the middle east had just awakened
to news of bombs and soy mixtures
dropped over Afghanistan.
The Taliban spokesperson
made nervous claims; in the background
you could hear his watch, or maybe
his cell phone: badooop, badooop.
It was the sound pac man makes
when he gets bitten by ghosts.
History usually misses
those kinds of details.
He: "We shot down an American plane."
Press: "Can we see proof?"
He: Nervous laughter.
2.
Mr. Bin Laden:
I hope they bring you back alive.
When they translate your words,
they pick stupid voices, who stutter,
and they ignore the native tongue
of your peninsula: The poetic,
flower covered propaganda
of holy wars and great epics.
You are too stiff for my liking;
your eyes are captivating
but if you were a rock star
no one would see you
because you do not move.
You don't scare me.
You just look sad
and paralyzed.
I hope they bring you back alive
so you don't die a hero
in blazes of bombs, dying for your god,
a war hero, a religious martyr,
whatever it is you think you are.
I want you to feel
what machine gun firing
does to your hands as you age;
I want you to be too proud
to request American Medicines.
I want you to be
like exiled Nazi war criminals
hiding in the suburbs;
fat, smelly german men
who weep themselves to sleep.
You know that guy christ,
if he didn't die on that cross
no one would have remembered.
I want you to be forgotten.
3.
Let's talk on your own terms;
Iblis, the red guy with horns
who refused to bow to man
because he would only praise
Allah, and not Allahs creations.
And Allah said;
Get out from this disgraced
and expelled. If any of them
follow thee, Hell will I
fill with you all.
And hell was ice cold
from the absence
of the love of Allah,
whose love was a light
that heated all things.
4.
When the bombs dropped
I was awake all night,
watching the television
until dawn.
Outside the window,
I saw a white powder
falling from the sky
and evaporating
as it hit the ground.
I was suddenly afraid:
They must be
retaliating.
I turned the news back on
to see if they had retaliated.
Instead, the newsman said
to expect light flurries
of snow.
-e.
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