Recurring nightmare.

gentle curve, soft arc in slo-mo, such agility,

capability, fragility, the perfect

trajectory into the apparently

immutable object, solid as a pyramid,

shimmering in the sun.

The projectile proceeds as if into a sponge,

a bar of soap, a stick of butter,

in the one side but not out

the other‹

BOOM!

All the rest is permanent memory,

the day the earth stood still, at least

here, but not Hiroshima, mon amour,

que pasa calabasa on the

hot lead road to Basra

the flattened Panama hat in charred

El Chorillo, carne humana, bien asada‹

the silence of the little lambs of

El Mozote tossed in the air with

martial glee, not to fall on broken knee

but bayonets are what they get, slicing &

dicing their niño bellies amidst furious,

drunken laughter, los hombres alumni reunion

of the School of the Americas, America

God shed his grace on these oldies but goodies,

gazing to Gaza, dreaming of Dresden,

kneeling room only in the national stadium of

Chile today hot tamale, where unspeakable acts

transpired under mid-field, just to make the unmistakable

point, GOOOOOL! Send me the head of

Salvador Allendelivered on 11 de septiembre,

nothing but the very best defoliation

carpet-bombing Indochinese rebel nations,

getting tired? I¹m inspired!

Angola, Afghan, Nica, freedom fighters,

special orders don't upset us,

from Guatemala to peacock throne,

Patrice Lumumba skinned & boned

on orders from afar to here, there & everywhere

station chiefs, thugs & thieves, giddy-up

Ahab the Arab, sheik of the burning sands,

Deir Yasin, Sabra, Chatilah,

wounded on your knees, there is Che,

in La Higuera, Malcolm X at the room of Audubon balls,

forward march to Monteczuma's Halls,

death squad hot rods, Waco, Rosewood, Manzanar,

My Lai, Playa Girón, toast the mushroom clouded anniversary

of August 9 in Nagasaki, all the way,

Enola Gay, hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today,

Operation Phoenix, Rolling Thunder, Enduring Hope, Enduring Freedom,

Desert Storm, Infinite Justice, last but not least,

the legendary Mongoose.

BOMBS AWAY! From the playas of Vieques to the

shores of Galilee we will fight our country's battles

to the mountains of Aghanistand by your man, how damaged

is your collateral, how bleached are your black-eyed women,

their veils of tears in the valley of death, they fear no evil,

special operations, Rangers, Seals, Green Berets, Blue Helments,

Silver Shirts, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, topless, bottomless,

Cosa Nostra, Huns, Visigoths, Vandals, the anti-Christ in the

Laotian central highlands, in Cambodia, there you were,

there you weren¹t, your denial plausible, audible, laudable, from

Bogotá to Belgrade you will be set free—

involuntarily, until the Big Mac pay back jump back sneak attack

blow backing into that little corner of upscale vertical southern

Big Apple sitting duck air raiding invading, look at what the prodigal

has learned day trading‹

UNTHINKABLE! UNIMAGINABLE! INCONCEIVABLE!

How'd we get into the crosshairs, Kimosabe,

dropped into the line of fire

of the metropolitan funeral pyre?

It is the reflex, in concentrated form,

what the most advanced civilizations have dumped

onto the landfills of the globe, fantastic boomerang,

convex lens of history pressed smack dab on the eyeball

of the master class, now infuriated, that from the most

remote, ruined dung-heap, the shit has hit the fan has dried the tinder,

whipped the fuse burning phosphorus white,

enter stage right the resentful former acolyte

bent on revenge for every single slight

his unanticipated delight returns the top pyromaniac¹s

chief export product as surprise package, merry Christmas of

mayhem, happy Ramadan for all you have been to us,

we are now to you, in your face, been here, been there,

smiling from safe haven, snapping off the hand that fed him,

led him, board & bedded him, disciplined student of predation

whose button men mug the one indispensable nation

offers the last empire what finally matters

the great red herring on a silver platter—

WHAM BAM OSAMAMAN!

You think, how fast everything changes.

There are decades when nothing happens & there are weeks

when decades happen, Lenin said, breathlessly packing his luggage

last stop Finland Station, these are the weeks that were, that are, that

will be, the genie is out of the bottle, the cat is out of the bag,

FULL STEAM AHEAD!

The war begins, this is the only easy part.

Those who set in motion controlled forces also set off uncontrolled forces,

the great, bushy-bearded Teutonic military scientist explained.

The camel jockeys, dressed in rags, fight back. Time for Plan B.

Send in the Special Activities Division, Directorate of Operations,

armed spooks, bearing tools of interrogation, dentist drills, scalpels,

cattle-prods, electrodes, concertina wire, pliers, straight razors.

My king, once presumed an idiot, is beatified, his star rises at

exponential speed, this emperor & his new threads, he so fine.

The supposed author of the deed, once thought a punk,

is public enemy numero uno. The suspect culture becomes a

culture of suspects, warily eyeing men who did not shave today,

or who are a darker shade of pale,

who have bushy eyebrows,

who stumble thru English as a 2nd language,

who speak furtively on pay telephones,

who are to blame as the once robust economy coughs & wheezes,

or was that yesterday? Or the day before? Or the day before that?

No importa, in any event, the honey to the moon Alice is over,

the Enron Enema has begun, your leading economic indicator is

sliding south, your plastic is melting, you have bet your last hedge,

you are downsized, hit the road Jack, learn the meaning of

sacrifice, do not question authority or otherwise fall into suspicion,

loose lips sink ships, you¹re in the army now, bring on the tribunals,

star chambers, summary justice, welcome back Alien & Sedition Acts

of random kindness, where are Jefferson, Paine, Sam Adams when

we need them. Hail Cesar, paredon!

Enough whining about civil liberties, this is a question of civilization,

of whether you live or die, if your house is turned into a mosque

supervised by towel-headed swarthy sheiks, waiting to croak for the famous

70 virgins in the eternal garden of unearthly delighted to meet you

at the intersection of suicide paradise & the for sale sign on the

Brooklyn Bridge.

Cannot pause for those slow on the draw the line in the sand,

you are with us or agin us, Hatfield or McCoy, no neutrals,

no grey areas, the ice melts, your ass is grass, this is it, make no mistake about it,

the big rock candy mountain of corpses, the end of sloth,

self-indulgence, political correctness, the great redressing of all

ripened resentments, making up for lost time, false starts, being

pussy-whipped by tin-pot tyrants sprung from their bowels in the 1st place.

you want tyranny, just watch, there is one flag, one country, one party hardy

until you drop or we drop-kick you, the veterans of the Œ60s

will not pull your chestnuts out of the fire, they have tired,

this is not Vietnam, this is not the way we were, this is not

your grandfather¹s Oldsmobile, they are making amends

at a gallop for their excesses, they are running for cover &

praying that there will be something left in the 401K why

jelly slip-sliding thru the academy where debates on the just war theory

are just that, just for you know who & how & when the train

to the final conflict departs, standing room only for those dressed

in mourning every morning, grief-stuck, grief struck down by the

colossal emerging basic industry of bereavement, the commodity fetish

of collective sorrow. Their apologies, as if they actually meant something,

if offered, are precious, Oh, we are so sorry for smearing smallpox

on the blankets we donated to the Indians, Oh, pardon us for being too pushy in

Persia, Oh, excuse our killing the fish when we mined the harbors of Corinto,

Oh, we wish we¹d let the St. Louis dock, forgive us the peculiar institution,

what you mean, we, white man o war? They only regret not being

thorough enough, or leaving traces, or not covering their tracks,

they will, however, let you cry on command for them,

in their name, pray, light votive candles, then slap you silly &

laugh all the way to their banks, they will tractor beam you up, up & away,

on Donner & Blitzen, on Kunduz & Kandahar, Taser & faser,

leave nothing to chance, all systems go is how the big boys dance,

C-130s, Hellfire missiles, not so smart cluster fuck bombs &

their flesh-easting doo-wop offspring, the bomblets,

please don¹t eat the daisy cutters, 15,000 lb. BLU-82s, size of your

average Volkswagen Beetle juiced with ammonium nitrate & aluminum,

remember the recipe, last used in smaller scale in Oklahoma City,

they commingle, these tears & F-16s, Predators, tank-penetrating bullets,

cave-burrowing shells, they elevate, like water in the locks of the canal,

the Joint Strike Fighter, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,

it is the emotion of spectacle & the spectacle of emotion,

delirious, distilled, focused, as Mars awaits the aroma therapy of napalm,

your reward for joining the national commune of organized anguish,

the fate of a deer in headlights. The eagle, having tasted red meat, remains

insatiable, his master, intoxicated by the early victory, on the cheap,

did not do this to enable the men to be clean shaven or to liberate the chicks,

this is just gravy on his mashed potatoes, he puffs up his chest,

festooned with medals & bunting, forgoing all rest & is ready to rumble,

LET'S ROLL! Trumpets, drums, it¹s taps for the sudden influx of inmates in

Qala Jangi, where dead men tell no tales, unlike Attica, where the strong survived,

but in this pulverized redoubt of resistance, surrender begins the chronicle of death foretold,

wanted, DEAD OR ALIVE, preferably deader than a door nail the coonskin to the wall,

bullets in the forehead, sightless, hands tied behind backs, feet bound, bombs bursting in air,

bearded in their lair, ducks in barrel, sucker punched, crapping in their blankets,

this was not the deal, an object lesson in plea bargaining with the Great White Father,

wet dream of the LAPD, Bull Connor, Reinhard Heydrich, Lieut. Wm. Calley, Tachito,

turkey shoot in Mazar-i-Sharif, a blizzard of drumsticks & giblets,

Pashtun trail of tears of on their pillows, fingernails on the floor,

blood turned black on adobe walls, the new Afghani adhesive, stuck in the middle

with you, last man standing¹s miserable scream, Tora Bora, boolah boolah,

last rites for the fabulous mullahs, holed up here, there, rigor mortis everywhere,

are they elusive, crafty, invisible, or just more useful on the lam, better for the hunt

to have a prey, saving them for a rainy day,

semper fidelis, the appropriate scene, SEND THE MARINES!

If you pray with the pacifists you will wind up in camouflage,

if you retain faith in the squeezed lemons you will be doing push-ups

in basic training, if you live in the past you will wish you never reached

the future, do you feel the sweat between your thighs,

the growing redness in the whiteness of your eyes?

This is the law of the land of hook, line & sinker,

alma mater of three-card monte, the mother of all ponzi schemes.

How many conspiracy theories fit on the head of a pin?

How many Jews weren't in the incinerated towers?

When did you stop beating your wife?

The socialism of fools lives in the rubble of lower Manhattan,

buried with the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, their

Occupation Government & of course, Elvis.

ALL ABOARD ANTHRAX!

Cutaneous, inhalation, hybrids, i¹ts a pity she¹s a spore,

cavity checks for the Herefords, especially the swarthy ones,

an all-points bulletin from the darkest recesses of the gene pool

unleashed, the germ, of course, occurs naturally in the ground below

purple mountains¹ majesty, beneath the fruited plain,

on whom will the snitch jacket be fitted for this one?

Will you open the winning ticket to the sweepstakes,

a bon mot from your main squeeze, the draft notice,

the regret to inform your son is dead letter,

your 34th credit card, another anonymous, powdery missive from

the Timothy McVeigh fan club? A sucker's born every New York minute!

LOOK OUT! The bridges are ready to blow!

or are they, what¹s the fate of the Golden Gate, get me to the

toll booth on time, the bridge over troubled waters guarded by

chicken little, the sky is falling, the Martians have finally landed.

Whatever you do, just don¹t follow the money trail

that writes the map of new targets, enemies, places to go,

resources to harvest for their rightful owner, mother county come to papa,

a plethora of patrimony to pilfer, miles to go before you sleep,

appointments to keep the faith at the altar of the skull & cross bones of lucre,

golden calf, hog futures, derivatives, hedge funds, arbitrage, T bonds,

here at the real ground zero, the capitol of capital, home of the

not so brave old world disorder unraveling, tiger by the tail

disguised as quest for holy grail, holey moley, neon light flashing the

warning of the haunting specter, beware:

ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR.

Re mem mem, re mem m member when,

remember Archduke Ferdinand, the assassination of whom

you learned by rote in junior high school, began the War to End

All Wars, remember Pearl Harboring the illusions that this began

round II, remember the Alamo, the Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin,

Los Torres Gemelos, the reason to believe for World War III,

remember to put your molar under the pillow for the tooth fairy,

remember to send flowers this Mother¹s Day, most of all remember

to forget everything, pledge allegiance, tie a yellow ribbon,

rediscover love of country, put a flag, no, two flags,

on your car, the pennants you buy on the cheap from the cheery mexicano

on the corner, relieved to be selling banderas instead of bags of peanuts &

bouquets of roses, hoping that the immigration cops on the prowl will

cut him some slack as he fulfills a socially necessary function in el norte,

wear a red, white, and blue pin on your lapel, your bosom, thru your ear,

umbligo, nose, tongue, nipple, labia majora, Johnson, wherever,

ask Miss Cleo, she pulls no punches, she plays the hunches,

she loves you bunches, believe everything they tell you,

they are always right, father knows best, they do not lie,

they have your real interests at heart, they want to make you

whole again, see me, touch me, feel me, heal me,

they want you to lie down in green pastures, their rods &

their staffs will comfort you, herd you, dress you up & down,

you will learn to walk like a man, talk like a man, genuflect,

bend over, above all, salute & await orders.

This is not in Nostradamus, nor anticipated in Revelations,

not found in tea leaves, your palm, visible in your aura,

you cannot pray it away, you cannot do what you were doing last week

with more intensity & think that means something,

it is not like bad acid, you wake up & that hideous halluncinatory face

with black frogs oozing from its nostrils that lasted for a hundred years

yesterday night is gone, on the contrary, it is not, it is here, hydra-headed,

heaving, fire-breathing, carnivorous, rapacious, it has moved into

the guest room, eating broken glass on your futon, it meets you for

breakfast, joins you jogging, slithers into your suddenly not so conjugal

bed of nails, you can hold your breath till you¹re blue in the face, there it

is, you cannot leave it to Beaver, to geniuses, priests, rabbis, chiropractors,

chant till you attain sartori, convert to Buddhism, fly Trans Love Airlines,

your karma does not matter, your vibes do not count,

who cares if you write 10,000 letters to your democratically elected

representative, it is not even papel higiénico, carnal,

you can drink absinthe till the dawn¹s early light,

ingest 6-packs of Prozac, go for colonic therapy, deep tissue massage,

stimulate your abs, it will not go away, you can brood, exude, get stewed,

it is here to stay, you can set yourself on fire, say the rosary, confess,

get reborn, you can ply yourself with ciproflaxin, gobble double doses of

oxycycline, go vegan, eat an apple a day, you are not safe, there's always

smallpox, ebola, the plague, diseases you have never even heard of,

fasten your seatbelt, surround yourself with pistol-packing sky

Marshal Dillons, you are not secure, you can pop Viagra,

enlarge your penis, tighten your vagina, change your sex entirely or

become celibate, so what, it is just that this is how it all works

& now the gloves are off, you think it is bad now, wait until tomorrow,

when J. Edgar Hoover renascent shows up at your apartment

& says, "Search warrant? Don't make me laugh, faggot,"

when gumshoes carrying heat talk to your high school teacher about that

incendiary term paper, when they use thermal imaging on your

former Communist Party member grandfather who thought he¹d put all that

behind him, when your 18-year-old son says he is being shipped off to

take Baghdad & he might not be home for Kwanza,

when you have to give them money back to go to work,

when they laugh in your faces as you ask them for a raise,

when the benefits dry up, or have you forgotten the meaning of the word

sacrifice, ingrato, when you find out that guy who lived across the hall

has been panhandling at the freeway exit, you wondered where he got

such an even tan in the winter, when you realize that invasion of privacy is not

just an abuse of celebrity doctors¹ trash cans,

when you discover that police brutality isn¹t some irrational concoction

of Negro male baggy pants adolescent imagination which gets from the git-go,

that all the hype could never cleanse their shields & clubs of decades of

gore & dirt, renovating them as heroes while Abner the Haitian &

his unlucky rectum & Amadou the African & his Swiss-cheesed bullet-holed

body are disappeared, vaporized, that was then, this is now, time to

move on, keep on trucking, that's all folks, you will find out all this as

you discover that hamburger helper is the main course in your meal,

that la migra isn¹t just for the wetbacks,

that barbed wire isn't just for cattle,

that you could wind up smoking the exploding cigar meant for Fidel,

that Star Wars isn't just a movie,

that first strike capacity does not refer to the fastball pitcher,

that there is nothing they will not do that they believe they can

get away with, that¹s your habeas corpus up for grabs, homeboy,

that your eyes will bleed themselves blind if you keep scratching at

the wool they pulled over them,

that Al Hajj Malik Shabazz, aka Detroit Red, was right, after all,

I am not anti-American, I am not an American, I am a victim of America,

memorize this, it will help you make it through the night,

hopefully before it is not too late, enable you to comprehend

that you were BAMBOOZLED,

that you have been a CHUMP,

that we all can't just get along,

that class has nothing to do with style,

that becoming a fighter is not about pugilism, nor killer instinct

primarily a reference to boxing,

that a union is not about dues,

you got the NYPD blues,

you got everything to lose,

that pleading for mercy is not an option,

that war hysteria is not spontaneous,

that they want you to push the panic button,

that they are talking about torture as a form of extracting information

for a purpose, it¹s not like this method suddenly occurred to them

or emerged as consensus from one of their anti-terrorist focus groups,

that you have been taken to the cleaners so often

that you are now buck naked & that you suddenly see

when you look in the mirror, there is the Third World,

which is not a post-modern concept or something

from the realm of science fiction, a subspace anomaly or

the object of tax deductible donations to save the skeletal remains of

poignantly posed lice-ridden, dark-skinned children, photos suitable for

framing, no way José, it is here with you in its glory,

lacerated, thirsty, threadbare, but do not be deceived by appearances,

the explosion is coming, who knows where, who knows when,

irrepressible historical urge, everything rises & must converge,

the shade, haunting specter, its saga oft-repeated, rarely heeded,

the ubiquitous old mole, knows the way out, it¹s him,

or the BARBARIANS. First lesson of this school, there are

no exceptions to its iron rule.

TAG! YOU ARE IT!

& neither it nor you any longer have a country, or a flag,

only the planet of US imprisoned by THEM, the option thus

equating you have no way of escaping, 'tis the season for rhyme &

reason narcotic doses of holiday shopping will not obscure

the thunderous sound of the other shoe dropping,

next stop for Xmas stalking, the festive greeting worth repeating:

either become the arising wretched of the earth

who alone determine their real worth,

or just be wretched,

either end the horror

or horror without ending

no more pretending whose world will be‹

at last, por fin!...

upending.

Los Angeles, Fall-Christmas, 2001

Round 2, to be continued...

-- Jon Hillson