Six Hundred Thousand Iraqi Dead

Six Hundred Thousand Iraqi
Dead
eviscerated of life,
mutilated beyond recognition,
transported to the oblivion of
eternal silence
by the cold unyielding machinery of
madness and destruction.

Six Hundred Thousand Iraqi
Dead
as a consequence of one man’s
cowboy midnight dreams.

Six Hundred Thousand Iraqi
Dead
yet the lattes continue to flow,
no expressions of outrage discernible
above the din of traffic,
no interruption in the business of
doing business,
no moment of silence,
no witness to the mass murder,
no solemn prayers of mourning and grief
streaming from the nation’s pulpits,
not one noticeable outcry
amid the clamor for more as consumers
crowd the marketplace looking for
something spectacularly new and different.

Six Hundred Thousand Iraqi
Dead
among a nation of walking dead too
immersed in the clutter and indifference of
modern existence.