Listen to a reading by Tim Foley:
He hung up a sign that said Secretary of War,
snapped a picture for the socials,
shut the door,
took a swig of Jameson straight from the bottle,
then sat down and fondled the revolver in his desk drawer
like a little boy playing with his penis.
Visions of cruise missiles danced through his head,
aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines
and tiny middle eastern bodies blown to bits by glorious inventory.
Mushroom clouds flashed in his eyes
as he caressed the trigger with an index finger.
“They call me the Secretary of War,” he said.
“They call me the Secretary of War.”
He did not feel the robins in his chest
or hear the red-winged blackbirds trilling in his hair.
The electricity of the flesh was a stranger to him.
Exuberance was a deadbeat dad who never called.
Outside the Pentagon walls a cicada roared unnoticed
and the grass sang ancient hymns to the sun god.
People bustled in and bustled out,
their minds buzzing with Palantir porn,
their lips casting spells of Raytheon and ruin.
Under the rubble of a far away building
a child reached out a hand in the darkness.
Her cries were silenced by gulps of whiskey
in the office of the Secretary of War.
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Inspired outrage:: How can Trump be denied the Nobel Peace Prize for honestly renaming the Dept of Defense the Departmen of War.
And have we forgotten the one member of Congress out of 435 who voted against the War on Afghanistan, Barbara Lee, now the mayor of Oakland. She had proposed as an aspirational signal renaming the Dept of Defense and naming it the Dept of Peace. She should have been the Secretary of Peace, but the patriarchy had a different tune to play....and now Trump known for lying is speaking the truth: the US military exists not to defend us but to wage war.
Thank you. We need more poetics, even grim with the macabre reality of decaying empire.