day EIGHT HUNDRED and FORTY SEVEN

                                    Good Morning Iran

Good morning Iran

it’s Friday, eleven pm
my streets are quiet yet vibrant
the weekend is blooming over Manhattan
its lights are a halo across the Hudson

it’s morning in Shiraz
the weak winter sun
paints the Persian Gulf golden
I watch you from
seven thousand miles away

you’re another foreign target
to be crossed out
like Iraq
like Libya
like Afghanistan
you don't want to play with atoms
do you know what it feels like
to vaporize seventy thousand lives?
Do you know what it feels like
to play God?

Good morning Iran

I see your militias outside of Aleppo
trying to push the rebels to sea
have you seen mine?
Have you seen Uncle Sam’s artillery
firing shells from the rubble of Homs?
Have you seen the black issued combat boots?

I will turn your mosques into shopping malls
and build Disney Lands in Tehran
I will paint you as another villain in history
I will take your lands and scar your children
I will bring you liberation

Good Morning Iran

you don’t think I’ve forgotten
about those hostages do you?
You rejected my banks
what do you mean sovereignty?
You will know freedom

I am morality in a copper casing
I am the thunder of a thousand bombs
I am the desert tempest
I am bullet shock
I am the machinery of consumption
I am the bloody talons
I am empire

Good morning Iran

I don’t hate you
but I need you to build bombs
I need to sell helicopters
I need to turn the cogs
I need to keep these wheels moving
or my people will start looking around
there must always be another enemy

Good morning Iran

the eagle spreads its wings at dawn

--Damian Rucci