When I wrote the following, little did I know that I was prophesizing. Little did I know that in a few years I'd be living this poem. Three years ago I was somewhere between Ramstein Air Force Base and New Jersey. I was on a cargo plane. The chains on the floor were cold and I watched an airman inflate his travel mattress and snuggle in for the night. I never felt so alone.

The poem was originally just a few jagged lines, mixmatched sentences and beautiful in my eyes but not within the grasp of the reader. The following is what I make of it now.





Morning Has Broken

In the opening frames
the actress addresses
the entire Syrian army
privately with a speech
holding a stick
and then retreating
after being hit
by one of them
with an ammo belt.
As she walks away
she strikes the stick
against a pole
and parts of it fly
high into the air.
It's just another day
in the suburbs of Beirut.
She comes from a lower
middle class working family
in the southern United States.

She is filmed as she wanders
through the third floor
of the abandoned building
where the Syrians
shave and bathe,
make catcalls at her
from the window sills
as she walks to the dekhena.
Dogs drift in and out
of the building
and lose their skin
from the mange.
She tries to save them
but they all eventually die.

In the previews, Julia Roberts
walks into the rooms
of an unoccupied building
in the Levant, near the sea
where the Syrian troops
launch their evil plots
from hand-me-down fox holes.
It cuts to a montage
of tracer bullets and
embassy dialogue:
important people
whisper important things
to other important people,
there is more than enough
of the requisite drama,
katuyshas, Mercedes
and hidden faces.

On one of the rubble strewn
balconies, there are wine bottles
and a flak jacket
and pictures of half dressed
women from magazines
with hand drawn breasts,
nipples in red ink.
Some of them
are pasted onto the wall,
most likely with ejaculate.
The harmless literature
of soldiers is everywhere.

Other rooms have sundry items,
clumps of old flat bread
still in the bag where sometimes
a bird is found trapped
and is freed if they're lucky enough
to be found as they flutter
and fight the inevitable.
There are boots hardened
by sun and rain,
and cigarette butts,
and the putrefying entrails of sheep
from an impromtptu feast the soldiers
enjoyed several days before,
there's empty corned beef cans or tuna.

In the quiet scenes of Act II
Julia Roberts finds certitude
in the Creator and Sustainer
of the entire universe,
just in time. The book
is written and closed,
the script mysteriously disappears.
The timeline is abridged later
when the captives are traded
by the opponents,
victory belongs to one
side not the other.
Syria moves their forces
into the Bekka Valley
several weeks before
the first bridge
is taken out by the IDF
although this is said to be
the pretext for the war,
it is a lie.

The audience applauds
at certain times,
the moments of liberation,
ticker tape parades,
where not a single corpse is used.
Not a single child is wasted,
not one of them can steal
a scene anymore,
their eyes caked
with the mud of C'anaa.
Death to the Great Satan
they said, it was their only crime.
Dancing in the streets on September 11th,
who cares about some much deserved
Shadenfraude. Shadenfraude
is not a punishable offense.

Finally,

Julia rises
into the air
suspended by thin
flesh-colored bungee cords.
American soldiers advance
dressed as dancers in full regalia
lifting her vigorously,
outrageously erotic-
from the refuse of her occupation.
It is a monumental scene,
the crowning glory, years in the making.

As she moves across the sands
of the beach a black soldier
leans over to help her
onto the amphibious
he is thinking Normandy
and Julia looks into his South
Carolina good intentions
and screams at him

this is a war crime you're involved in

but there is a woman
succumbing to hysteria
on the ramp. They all have
to move on, they all
have somewhere to go.
The USS Trenton has pirates
in the hold, docks in the port
of an allied nation, the lines
are quite long.
The sea undulates and is a terrible green
as it fills with the oil
that pours in from
the fuel depot of a civilian hub.
Julia asks one of the sailors
if this is normal
and he shakes his head
after looking at it again,
no ma'am. It's not.

As the credits roll:

The hold of the Cargo jet
opens and the airman
gather everyone for one
last photo. This is clearly
an intelligence maneuver.
The faces will be studied
and the bird takes it's last breath
and she releases it,
she saves only one.

Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix
boarding now,
the more or less catatonic
actress drags
her few things behind her
through Newark International.
Yusef Islam strums
a tune but she cannot see him.