Just like the brazen giants of Babeled fame,
With skyward steel tendrils claiming dominion over other lands;
Here at the once-beckoning gates of promise, in stolid stands,
Two towers to Prosperity, whose flame
Is the beacon of rapacity, and their game:
Traders of money. From their tightened fist
Glowers world-wide warning; their malign gaze glaring
At the ether expanse of multitude mist.

“Keep ancient lands, your huddled homeless!” growl they
Through gleaming teeth. “Give us your precious gems, your natural gifts,
Your best and brightest yearning for more than they can ever spend,
The insatiable strivers of your clustered coasts.
Send these, and only these: your modern monarchs,
Angels of avarice, to we
Who guard the gates before the golden door.
And just like the homeless, tempest-tost of Egyptian fame,

With generations hungry atop their wealth-covering sands,
The angered, desperate descendants of a holy hubris plans
A mother battle with new Pharaoh’s storied pomp,
Commandeering his own steel birds, falcons now with
Frenzied falconers, iron bellies heavy with the driving stuff of flame.

Twenty centuries to a shining September morning, when
Twin killers scrape a flawless sky, mere anarchy carefully
Careening into deliberate death, thoughtless now of imagined
Innocence, mindful of murder only, and their name:
Sons of Muhammed (Peace be upon Him), full of passionate intensity.
Steel skeletons incapable of support, a Center that cannot hold;
Wretched refuse flying flightless to teeming, gleaming streets
Summarily smudged with ash, and all ceremony drowned.

And now, a lion-headed son of always-promised privilege stands
On the pedestal of Jesus’ neck (Peace be upon Him),
all Christian mercy bleeding out in breathless hymns
Of righteous retribution vexed to nightmare.
And another multitude of slouching souls departing
On a vow to make a waste of desert sand.