A CENTURY OF US
MILITARY INTERVENTION
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METHOUGHT by Penny Rimbaud 2006
Hooded eyes, perfidious smile,
guarded yet serpentine in its guile,
it was the contorted face of intrigue I saw
through that paper-thin mask of a Holy War.
And in that devilry, known truth was not the truth told,
but the pity of truth cancered, yet still the lie was sold.
And so those temples to commerce fell,
that a people might know the fires of hell.
But this was too well planned, just too well manned.
Oh America, America,
were you not awaiting with baited breath
a recession which, with capricious grace,
might also have toppled those boorish towers
from that ungodly, hallowed space?
But where the iconic grandeur of that
when, through the arson of temperance,
the incineration of reason,
a subterfuge might work so well? A treason.
'The terrorists hate us for our freedoms.'
So calculated in his words, so considered in his touch,
it was then methought the gentleman did protest too much.
How grand this token of moral outrage
by he who was no more than his father’s son.
How blandly spoken this conniving sacrilege
by he who purloined victory on a victory not won.
Then here was the fulfilment of a dream,
a masterly Machiavellian scheme
wherein filial doubt would be atoned:
a preemptive strike against his own.
Three thousand martyrs for the cause of oil.
Three thousand numbers in the book of collateral.
And what mattered collateral
when that alone could settle the score?
What mattered collateral
when collateral is the very matter of war?
And in that bursting cascade of steel and glass,
which wrung blood from stone and made granite of hearts,
the lethal decisive vote was cast:
a modern-day Reichstag
He stood sovereign at last.
'God wants me to do it.'
Such sordid obscenity, smouldering and profane,
but Ground Zero would justify the vengeance
to be wrought in its name.
Oh yes, there is much to be made of war:
industrial stability in the anthem of whining cogs,
national security in the incessant pumping of rigs.
So would not the green-backed vulture now rise
cackling, phoenix-like, through those smoke-blackened skies?
'Our war is a war against terrorism and evil.'
Transparent in his duplicity, he stands exposed,
a simpering Judas, an emperor disrobed.
It was his voice I heard brag
as echo from those branded crags.
Oh yes, the poison of his shadow is etched indelible
into the cinder-caked city sidewalks.
It was his face I saw within that tragic pall.
He alone is to blame, he alone will fall.
'God bless America.'
* * *
And those who dived like sudden Christs
into the immortality of that fiery crucifixion,
recorded, documented, digitised and backed-up on hard-drive,
those whose lives he so willingly sacrificed
that he might stand beyond reproof,
they shall for all time be screaming their malediction:
'Pray do not forgive him, father,
he knows what he has done.'
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