IRAQ - End Game, 2004

It’s maybe just a game, 
but for the dead and dying,
the women and children crying,
it’s game over, just the same.

It’s a monstrous creation,
a game with a whispered greeting
for fearsome forces bringing
apparent liberation.

It’s not much to savour,
for soldiers in sand:
no castles to hand,
scant hiding, no cover.

It’s a dust-ridden road,
and dirty, to topple a tyrant. 
Nothing apparent
but tears, sweat and blood.

It’s a dry, desperate track,
barely seen through the wind and the sand,
to prized palaces that now stand 
abandoned - places of no going back.

It’s a one-way street
With no way out.
There never was.  Just dust, just heat,
And death, and rout.

It’s a blind alley, a maze
so much more than a shame:
a sham, a rout, a craze.
End game.