The obnubilating thunderhead
Of broken building, planes and faith
That billowed foully, pumicing
Those gruesome flecks of human bits
Down on the canyons of New York
Provides the perfect object lesson:
That the Chivalry of Modern War
Waged between rival dilettantes
Pumping up on certainty is the
Bodycount of bystanders and passersby.
From stadia in Chile
To the suburbs of Baghdad,
Mining towns in Congo
To a cop car in Detroit,
Death camps, death squads, death cults,
In Ramadi or in Alabama,
Even to the killing fields
In care homes in Home Counties,
In war or peace or in between
This is how fragile fuckwits
Become Caesars, through the
Bodycount of bystanders and passersby.