Dissident Voice

March 21, 2003

They said that death

was far too easy

for the likes of Timothy McVeigh;

that the appropriate sentence

would have been a lifetime of solitary-

surrounded by bloody photos

of the ones he massacred;

forced to watch and hear

for the rest of his life,

a continuous replay

of screaming, broken children,

shattered, splattered flesh,

and the cries of a grieving nation-

and I agreed.

I agreed because I don't believe in killing

anyone-

not even a murderer of children.

I agreed because

I do believe in justice-

Poetic Justice.

Today, as I listen to the boy-king

callously and casually

speak of his plans to Shock and Awe-

plans that will surely make Iraq

our 21st century Herzogovina-

I say once more that I don't believe in killing

anyone-

not even a murderer of children;

so tonight as fire falls from the skies of Iraq,

I pray justice for our naked emperor,

Poetic Justice:

May he lose a month of sleep

for every life he snuffs;

May the shrieks of those he murders and maims

eternally fill his ears,

to the exclusion of all other sound;

May his flesh rot from the inside out

with the cancers that consume Iraqi children

because of US DU-poisoned water;

May the rest of his life be a ghoulish nightmare,

haunted by the faces of those he has massacred;

stalked by the phantoms

of those whose fate is so frightening

they can only wish they were dead;

May he reap what he sows,

and as much as he did it to the least of these,

to my Iraqi sisters and my brothers,

may it be done unto him;

May he live forever

in the Terror he has created.

And let us say,

Amen.

Keren Batiyov lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania