The Verdict

Charged with crimes against insanity
Sentenced to live on a plateau of mediocrity
Words fall blindly from his quaking lips
Or scatter wildly from his fingertips

A cell to sell on the open market
The meanings well in writhing carpet
Facts and figures here in concrete
Contracts signed in ink indiscrete

Lies and allegations based on lies and allegations
Murderers freed by legal negotiations
Money changes hands and lives and destinies
Of cultures and countries with bullshit remedies

The man in the iron lung breaths a sigh of relief
When the power is disrupted by political brief
Rises from his half-life, his mind in tatters
Heads for the hills where all that matters

Is the taste of raw tarmac in the back of his throat
Is the sound of the drawbridge being raised over the moat
The sight of his body unhindered by science
And the feeling of leaving it all behind in defiance

Don’t prick me, don’t prod me, don’t cure me of rage
My weapon, my warning, my turning the page
From ignorance blissful, from head in the sand
From fences to sit on, from throwing in my hand

The cards are all marked with numbers and signs
Marked with cash totals to be made by designs
On those who are not even permitted to eat
At this banquet of corrupted and ill-gotten meat

So the verdict handed down is hardly a surprise
When the judge and the jury are those in disguise
Who set up the table who financed the game
For one man’s atrocities are another man’s gain

November 2006

Written on the occasion of Saddam Hussein being found guilty