Iran – poems 2 die for

PENNSYLVANIA

boots on the ground
boots on the ground

to save America
the Army of Northern Virginia
and its divine General
needs
boots on
the ground

so they have headed into town
looking for cobblers
having
no boots at all

no way
to save America
without boots
on the ground

the town
now swarming
with gray and
butternut brown

fixing their feet
whilst another America
is moving towards them
a blue America
bitterly opposed
to schism

which might not
want to watch
from a distance
as slavery bleeds
the heart
for another
thousand years

boots on the ground
meeting boots on the ground

one way
or another
America will be decided
over the next three days

THOSE LITTLE GIRLS

let us not
be too hasty
to condemn

let us not
rush to conclusions

little girls now
all of them I do
believe under
the age of ten

but give them
another ten, twenty years
who knows, who can forsee,
what they might not
grow up as,
horribly change into

who can show me
their note books,
their sjetch pads

assure me
there everything is
as the weepy weak press
are telling us

pictures of Mom and Dad
the sun, the tree, a house,
a swing, a cat
themselves
in their best dress

little poems and prayers
celebrating life
and love

like normal little girls
our Western girls

and not, as I am more
inclined to believe,
curses and tirades
calls for
a world full
of destruction
and death

drawings of drones, pictures
of missiles raining down
vengeance on
bad bad cities
ballistic rockets shooting
up into space
with (drawn in red
red
blood red crayon)

blood red noses
and fiery tales

who
can dispute this
deny
this possibility?

the evidence
disappeared

TABANDA

The President is boldly
congratulating himself
on his essential
pre-emptive strikes
on a vicious, terrible people

I met one of these vicious
monsters decades ago
(met quite a few
but this one
I remember)
pulled the short straw
and had
to teach her English

all the middle-aged
British tutors at the college
horrified at her
reputation, flatly refusing,
worst of all
was going to be
one on one
me and her, head to head
bound for confrontation
nothing for
her ever good enough
no possible placation
hope of pacification

so I passed
through that door

looked around the room
no sign of mortal threat
no sign of imminent danger

just
Tabanda
sweetest student I
ever had
Libra glyph on
medallion
about her neck

not that I
knew, barring her name,
any of that yet

trying to
introduce myself, words
a bit stuck
not really coming out

needing to
make an adjustment, take
everything in my side

never before taught, met,
a woman of such
astonishing beauty

crazy the
lengths we need
to go to demonize.

THIS PICTURE,

THIS PICTURE

it is not what it seems
nothing is
what ot seems

an armada
sailing East
sailing across a
sea of mist, across
Homer’s wine-dark
smooth as
glass
could not
be unruffled

and in
its secret stockpile
many a
noose of light
for the Sultan’s turret

ships
big as cities
whose meaning be war
war
their entire industry
gliding to
their assigned
positions, making headway

nothing being
wrong with this picture

everything wrong
we can
no longer see

everything, everyone,
insisting it is all
a bad dream

the night, so dark
mother of
storms
about to
break

the story
so thin we are
about to see through it

far too late
to do anything

THIRTEEN

woke up
in the middle
of the night
to watch Alan
Dershowitz
debate Glenn
Greenwald

over the absolute
necessity of surgical strike
bombing
the shit out
of Iran

which Dershowitz won
hands-down handsomely by
ultra cogent argument
and
persistent
interruption

and being
a Harvard Man

this being the University
that refused thirteen
students
their degrees

woke up
to watch
Alan
Dershowitz

in an alternate
universe where
they had removed
all the universities

Dershowitz
talking the same old
safe-talk
shibboleth

the clock
somehow gone wrong
gone
hopelessly
intertextual

telling me it is
no time
for peace
for lying secure
in bed
thinking
poetry

already
on the verge
of striking thirteen