Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh
was hot as hell and filled with the nervous shadows
of dry bones and sick smiles
on the narrow streets of blood and broken glass,
memories of ancient temples
and the smell of escaping elephant shit
floating on the monsoon junk of another endless day
filled with acrid war smoke and sour piss,
as Kissinger sat in his cloistered Washington office
surrounded by his ass-kissing apparatchiks
who demurred when he plotted an invasion across a neutral border
with his tanks and his guns and his bombs and his helicopters
to bring random death and mayhem and marauding murder
to the rice paddies and the huts of peasants
speaking a language Henry never understood,
with power his only purpose.