Notes may be found after the poem.

RAMADAN 2004
for Manadel al Jamadi

 
I have heard them coming, with booted foot

stalking in my chamber,

with long small arms

and gore-bespattered uniforms

my grave dysarthria become to them

a thing of wonderment

 for hours it seemed I might escape

with only a deformity—

however shocking—mangled hands and feet,

retaining power to destroy mansions.

 The women visit me again

again unzip opaque disaster pouch, 

they crouch and grin,

all thumbs and blinding teeth

for pix which you can download here,

and then depart.

O, how I am constrained.

All is changed, changed utterly

thorough my gentleness

to a strange fashion of forsaking.

 but look at me: head frozen skyward

my breast weighed down with ice

Thomas Crofts

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dysarthria - difficulty pronouncing words as the result of damge to the central nervous system

Manadel al-Jamadi -  Information from Wikipedia
Manadel al-Jamadi (Arabic: مناضل الجمادي‎) was an Iraqi prisoner who was tortured to death in United States custody during interrogation at Abu Ghraib prison in November 2003. His name became known in 2004 when the Abu Ghraib scandal made news—his corpse packed in ice was the background for widely-reprinted photographs of grinning U.S. Army Specialists Sabrina Harman and Charles Graner each offering a "thumbs-up" gesture. Al-Jamadi had been a suspect in a bomb attack that killed 12 people in a Baghdad Red Cross facility. 
More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manadel_al-Jamadi

MOLOCH

Are people going to get hurt? Yes.

Are people going to get killed? Yes, they are.

Innocent people blown to smithereens? You bet.

Thousands of them? Sure.

 Valiant,

that fascinating but cryptic

over-exemplification

of candor, conjured from verbiage opaque

which like satanic Latin

doth decline from fair 

but let us try to clear the air

He retains an air of modesty…

What I want you to know, and then I’ve got to go,

what you must know is that I just don’t know
the soldiers know—boy do they know—

and what I’m hearing from them is it’s hard work

it’s hard work and it is difficult work

it’s not easy work

Hey you just asked that,

and I answered it to the best of my

ability. And I’m not going to answer it again.

although it is a very vague modesty

What’s MY job? Well my job is to know; to predict; and to direct.

Can I really do those things? Can anybody? Can you?

Let me just put it this way: it’s my job: it’s what I do.

My path is wide and long to tread,

and hath a greater compass

than men can know:

For mine is the drowning of bodies in the sea;

Mine the prison cell remote;

Mine is the strangling, and lynching by the throat;

Mine is the insurgent whisper deadly;

The plotting and the poisoning of men;

I do revenge, and punish openly,

And I dwell in the sign of the lion.

I am SATURN

Mine be the contagions,

And all the wicked plots of old.

My very look engenders pestilence.

So weep no more: I’ll give it all my diligence.

Why does it say Saturn there?

Because I ripped that off from Chaucer. that’s why.

It’s a war I’m telling you.

II.

You see, there are choices,

and every choice you make affects all the other choices you make,

including the ones you might have made

on that day

or the ones which on another day you didn’t make.

Can’t you understand that there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns?

Can’t you grasp that simple, elegant, vital truth

and put it in your mind, and think it, and see it, and feel it and know it,

and know that it’s true?

This is a war.

Is there going to be blood? You know there’s going to be blood.

Sheets of blood? Yes.

A fucking flood of blood? Probably.

Children dissolved in acid? Guts

hanging out of the burst-open bodies

and other bodies like burnt bacon

hanging from bridges? Probably.

Is it worth it? You bet it is.

Do I have dead baby parts in my hair

and in my eyes and underwear?

Do I drink wine from children’s skulls?

Are my testicles full of blood?

Does blood stream from my nipples?

You bet it does and I’ll tell you why:

I AM MOLOCH

Thomas Crofts

Moloch - Old Testament deity to whom parents sacrificed their children.