somebody hijacked those oddly diverting images of

devastation in miserably distant cities

and slammed them into middle America, half way up.

staring at the rubble, the Citizens of De-Muck-Rah-Cy

tried to put it into context: dammit, no-one warned about this

on MTV, on Oprah, on AOL, on Nickelodious

yet, those cranky yankee eyes lifted beyond

flag-waving retribution may see shreds of

steely truth among still-smoking debris

the fragments of a world trade centre look startlingly

similar to a television tower in Belgrade

cindered by guileless missile

the starkly violated frame of a Pentagon bears the air of

wounded innocence of a Sudanese chemical factory

unerringly hell-fired from afar

the bodies of emergency workers in their dismal

death smell as jarringly repulsive as dumb

villagers of My Lai so effectively exterminated in four hours

the shock writ deep upon onlookers, residents, patriots

chillingly resembles the disbelief of rescuers pulling dismembered

Iraqi children from the shelter where they had cowered

dismiss not, if you please, the dishonour roll of hot

wars and cold wars, overt and covert wars, gun-running, assassinations,

invasions and missile diplomacy all cunningly made in Uncle Sam,

not the inventor of international thuggery, no,

merely its arch exponent in myriad forms – from

carpet bombing to baby-emaciating sanctions –

across a wounded world kept forever in necessary pain by

stars-and-stripes imperialism,

the high-tech torture rack of the age

dismiss it, perhaps, while you bury the dead and wipe your eyes,

but do not remove it from the smouldering horizon of your

collaterally-damaged national conscience

for therein will you find the answers:

a veritable 767 load of come-uppance

with plenty of answers