Dead Center
Dinah Kudatsky
War Poetry Contest 2005 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention
We'll hit dead center. The center is dead
Baghdad, the dead center, the bloody center
Baghdad, the center with the cherry filling
A painless Pac-man pogrom, Nintendo warriors in a flawless execution
We send our hamburger-helper heroes to render their Captain Video carnage
as we hunker down in the living room with the nut mix
The history of the world has always been written by idiot Promethean punks on Harleys.
Each time, they say, this war is the good war.
This war can fill the dead center in you with a creamy cherry filling
And they tell us this war has powerful cleaning agents!
and they tell us this war is ready in minutes at the touch of a button!
and they tell us this war can make its own gravy!
This war, they say, will not harm your fine washables!
this war, they say, has been sanitized for your comfort and safety!
this war can be yours for just pennies a day!
(Why, even a child can operate this war!)
While CNN kills CBS in the ratings war
computer-chip gladiators slap a high five under Old Gory
pound each other on the back like the Giants pounded the Bills
like they are pounding Baghdad.
Better than a first down,
better than the best lay,
better than a close-out sale at the mall
In school, tow-headed children salute the red, white, and brutal
In school, they'll see historic videos of their fathers-
helmeted electron cowboys framed against a telegenic Arabian moon.
Now the Bush-master[1] lies with his five-sided mistress
There is some massive dysfunction in his love organ
He cannot contain himself. He commits premature annihilation
His mistress won't tell him he's a lousy lover
Clytemnestra[2], we await your avenging sword!
When you have a dead center, you can aim dead center
The Bush-master hits a bull's eye with his own bull in the dead center of America
He dreams of mobile launchers erecting
of cruise missiles cruising the soft creamy center of Mesopotamia
He sniffs and drools at the crotch of Mesopotamia
Naked in his aggression, he bites, the cherry goo center he bites, gushing red and black
and this is how he gets his rockets off
He dreams of oil gushing in rivers from Al Jazirah to Corpus Christi,
(this is my body this is my blood)
the Bush-master, in a sacrament from hell, in a ballistic frenzy, turns cannibalistic
chews off his own lips: we read his bloody lips
History is being written in a children's video arcade!
History is being written in the electronic cathedral!
History is being written in the sanitized lysol apocalypse!
The conquering blackhead[3] Norman brushes aside rumors of collateral damage,
like flies at a banquet. (He says America is well-aimed).
While children scream under their beds, drowned out by the screams of approaching B-52s
The Tigris, Euphrates, and Potomac are now joined at the mouth of the river Styx
While Mesopotamia bleeds black, the ink runs red
The CBS eye winks at the powerful. Peter Jennings dreams of a 30 share,
and in a fit of patriotism, the NBC peacock buries its own head in the sand
And Saddam, invited to dinner, is locked in the pantry
The state department has re-arranged all the chairs!
He hears them laugh, "Now there's more for us!"
He peers through a window, sees a carcass dead center, carved by psychopathic surgeons
They dip their oily fingers in bowls of fragrant water, awaiting dessert.
And Saddam sits on the golden throne of his imagination.
Dreams of Bush beheaded. Dreams that he has become Saladin, conquerer of Jerusalem
Spouts the poetry of holy death. Spills blood like sacramental wine
Crushes his people like a pomegranate
Each day these two grow more and more alike, the oilman and the sandman
They wear the same shrunken-head necklaces
Each faces Mecca, suitors holding poison bouquets
Dangling two pieces of the broken heart of the world, each worn on a golden chain
by two lovers who have not yet met
And what is the sound that the soul makes when it leaves the body in Baghdad?
in Kuwait? in Tel Aviv? in Amherst? (It goes whoosh.)
Hundreds of thousands hurtling through a hoop of flames-
The mother of all wars is eating her young! She doesn't know how to stop!
Even Moloch[4] is bloated and belching!
Now they sit very close, the firebombed, the crushed, the executed
They whisper to one another in an ancient tongue we can no longer understand.
They have become candles on the table in the house of a terrible god.
My dreams are all the power I have
I dream the Bush-master, in a convulsion of Manifest Destiny, devours his own tail.
I dream he is strangled by miles of yellow ribbon
I dream he is torched by a thousand points of light
I dream he becomes a burning Bush, by fury engulfed, by fury extinguished
And as we now pause for nation identification
I dream a crazy dream - that I've sent for that Clapper thing on t.v.
and I plug the war in, and turn this war off with just two claps
Then, we get to sleep the sleep of brothers and sisters hear only the sound of a whispering sigh
and dream an arabesque of cypress and elm
I think that life loves life still
The grass will grow again on the scorched earth
The mosque, the church, the temple, all
by war, peeled open to the ceiling of heaven itself
might now invite... a larger God.
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[1] Bush-master
Slang term for a 12-foot pit viper, a venomous snake
[2] Clytemnestra
King Agamemnon's wife. He slew their daughter to insure a Trojan War victory. Clytemnestra murdered him to avenge the deed.
[3] blackhead
Translation of (General) Schwarzkopf
[4] Moloch
The deity to whom children are burnt in sacrifice
