In ecru tanks they travel through the lands

of roaring flax 

in arsenic search of machines 

that pump through crust hungrily.



The thunder echoes:

there is no rush of rain;

a soft reverberation at first, 

brushing through the sand, 

And then the massive machines cease

in the face of those Americas.



Clay-creased faces look up 

to the tanks, turn the sky lime. 

they stare with pixel eyes 

and yell sepia words full of fear: 

like a disease, it spreads.



The second rumble

ejaculated from the click of a rifle 

in the brown hands, almost black

repeats itself until the tanks raise their own fire

and death onto the crashing machines.



The shots ring through the indigo air

until a first man dies in obsidian

falls back from the tank

crimson jetting out in all directions

a scarlet stream through buff sands.



Screaming—

it ain’t over yet—

tanks hacking into metal

bullets tearing white skin

the Arabs are fearless

but they are full of black

Fear.



While the families in rich Florida villas cross their pale fingers

over their 60 blaring inches of azure Mediterranean conflict. 



They don’t know their men are off in the golden desert

in their little ecru tanks

still crimson from the fight,

red-turning-scarlet-turning-puce,

dead like the 8-year-old girl

the  Egyptians or Pakistanis raped and killed.



But still all the Arab men are dead,

and all the American men are dead, 

and the cars continue to roll

down Manhattan streets

the oil boiling in engines, smoke swirling to the sky.



All dead under sallow sun

because of our addiction. 



The children and wives in puke-green huts, 

still thinking the husband is pumping honey

from the ground.