THE ANGEL OF GOVERNMENT

In a secure basement in DC, Cheney
takes call after call, channeling terror

into a dark clot in his left ventricle
from which Camp Echo will be born.

“I still believe we were right. No,
no. I would not do anything differently.”

A regime of images, of bureaucratic desire.
A word that makes the worst thing real.

*

The deranged angel’s wing, its larynx
like a chunk of silicon, coursing

with police. “The beginning of terror,” or,
“Turns out I’m really good at killing people.”

There is no going back from power.
There is nothing but terror watching

as psyche decays into history, into a mind
like a terminal, a monitor atop a desk

*

in the Pentagon, in a hospital, a black site.
Picture: you plug your heart into a projector

and its screen darkens over with all
your words’ forms. What do you really say?

What does dreaming in an empire become?
At midday, a man films a young Afghan

standing amid the rubble: “Americans?
The Americans will say anything.”

—

from Interrogation Days–published by dead mall press

Buy it here (note: a complete revised edition will be released this fall)

—

By RM Haines 👍