So, anyway, I see last week where Congress approves another million billion zillion dollars for President Chimp's War in Iraq. No surprises there. Then, this bridge collapses in Minnesota, to much wailing and voyeurism from the press, and the predictable calls for us to send our prayers to Minneapolis -- even though no prayer requests were forthcoming for the victims of similar bridge collapses caused by US bombing of Iraqi civilians.

Shortly afterwards though, Congress somehow manages to find another few hundred mil or so under their sofa cushions -- a huge-ass surprise, to see that anything was left after the million billion zillion they just poured into the friggin' war.

Then, this past weekend, as reported so gloriously on AP, President Chimp himself pays a visit to the collapse site and casts his own personal eyeballs on the scene, allows himself to be personally spoken to by a common, ordinary worker, makes a big fat promise about repair and restoration -- but, get this, he says "I make no promises on the timetable"; he never was much on timetables, was he -- has his picture taken in a hardhat surveying the devestation, gets back onto the helicopter, and flies home.

So, all this stuff starts crashing together in my head -- fat wads of cash pissed away on an illegal war, public works budgets going begging, bridges collapsing in the USA -- and then, while reading the Pat Tillman thread, I come upon your poet "op", writing:

there's a continuum of these slobber fests

from the summit of the twin towers

to such over kills

as this bridge collapse in the twin cities

a nation turning its lonely bully boy

eyes to tears over that yesterday ....

ought to think

fuck we do twenty.... sometimes sixty

such deeds

to the iraqis

on any given day...

...at which point the conceptual collisions build to critical mass and, just as the pile detonates, my first thought out loud is, "whoa, payback's a bitch!"



Available in three bitchin' formats:

http://www.sinkers.org/posters/payback/payback.jpg

jpeg image, 604kb

http://www.sinkers.org/posters/payback/payback.pdf

pdf image, 520kb

http://www.sinkers.org/posters/payback/payback.eps

eps vector image, 8.2mb

"Bush Surveys Bridge, Pledge Aids", Associated Press 08.04.07:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070804/D8QQAIMO0.html