[Bob's revised the poem, and it has appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer since first appearing here on Circulars.]

              We may not have chosen to live inside Dick Cheney's mind, but we do.
              Wyoming, I read somewhere, is the safest place in North America.
              No tornados, no tsunamis, no earthquakes, no monsoons, or floods. No major airport: no big planes crashing in the sleet.
              But if living in Wyoming is so safe, living inside Dick Cheney's mind, though it was formed there, is not safe at all.
              How do you get from Wyoming to Shock and Awe?
              Getting from Love to Hate, that's easy: Love, Live, Give, Gave, Gate, Hate.
              Love comes before life, and since newborns don't survive on their own, life at the beginning involves giving. It has to: breast milk, protection, language, diapers made out of whatever, some sort of attention before you crawl or walk. Everyone living was given some of that somehow.
              That gets us up to Give. Gave comes next because giving is tiring. You give and give and what thanks do you get? Nothing. Or worse. They think they're entitled; they're madder than ever; they sulk in their rooms, they throw rocks.
              So much for giving. The next logical step is to build a gate.
              But gates creak at night, they leak, they break, in fact, gates concentrate whatever's on either side, they distill hate.
              Love, Live, Give, Gave, Gate, Hate: Q.E.D.

              But getting from Wyoming to Shock and Awe?
              "Shock and Awe"? That's the Pentagon's current battle plan for Iraq: 300 to 400 cruise missiles the 1st day (more than in all of Desert Storm), 300 to 400 the next, to demolish water, electricity, communications, buildings, roads, bridges, infrastructure in general. "The sheer size of this has never been seen before," a Pentagon official told CBS. "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad." Harlan Ullman drew a parallel to Hiroshima: the Iraqi people will be "physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted"; it will be "like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but minutes." The point is "to impose [an] overwhelming level of Shock and Awe, to seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary's perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance."
              This is Shock and Awe, remember, not Wyoming.
              But it gets hard to tell them apart: overwhelming levels seizing control, paralyzing perceptions and understanding.
              That works for Wyoming and just about anywhere in the United States.
              That's the problem with living inside Dick Cheney's mind, whether we've chosen to or not.

              What's the point of Shock and Awe?
              To free the Iraqi people.
              Problem: "No safe place in Baghdad" contradicts "To free the Iraqi people."
              Rationale: Since the Iraqi people are enslaved inside Saddam Hussein's mind that mind must be destroyed. That means destroying Saddam Hussein's body, which means brushing aside Baghdad to find him to free the Iraqi people trapped inside his mind.
              But dead people are only free in the most limited way. Not much bang for the buck there.
              Deeper rationale: It's an adult world. Shock and Awe is adult political theater for a world audience. To reach an audience that big you have to project. That's the point of Shock, the sheer size of which has never, etc. Otherwise the audience won't be struck with Awe.
              What's the point of Awe?
              Awe kills two birds with one stone. For the right Arabs, it inaugurates democracy, or something, somehow. For the wrong Arabs, Awe will . . . what? Awe will awe them into submission.
              I can hear Dick Cheney arguing that Awe worked at Hiroshima.
              But Japan was at war with us, and Awe, or at least Instant Submission, didn't work outside Japan. The Iraqi people are not only not at war with us, we're rescuing them from Saddam Hussein's mind. And as for working outside Baghdad? Destroying it will awe al-Qaeda? That's a stretch. There are more al-Qaedans in London or Berlin than in Baghdad. Maybe we should get Berlin first.
              No matter how big you make Shock, you can't get to Awe.

              Forget it: We'll never know the exact route from Wyoming to Shock and Awe.
              But Shock and Awe is already halfway here: Here, Baghdad and Here, Wyoming. We're half "physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted"; our "perceptions and understanding" are half "overloaded."
              But even half a mind is enough to do the math: We're half capable of resistance.
              The shocks are gigantic, disgusting, but at least they're not shocking, once we give up our imaginary safety.
              The other half, Awe with its ersatz religious capital letter, we can resist.
              The weapons are huge and thoughtless, but they don't deserve a shred of awe.
              A small victory, but it's one weapon destroyed, the one they always use first.

[The Shock and Awe language comes from web sites found on Google under "Shock and Awe."]