The first two are about oil,
with heart-wrenching consequences –
the Gulf of Mexico poisoned,
the Persian Gulf also a toxic zone
from what we did to Iraq,
and in danger of going up in flames again
as we threaten Iran with a similar
rampage of destruction.

But behind these two disasters
lies the third, the biggest one,
the gulf between reality and fantasy
in the minds of the men in our government
who engineered these follies--
in short, their stupidity.

In every direction they fuck up:
Anyone who knows Afghanistan
could never swallow their fantasy
that they’ll succeed in wrenching it
into the modern world,
or at least make it our vassal state.

Already a failing empire,
this war is going to consign us to history
like the Soviet Union, for following
the same suicidal course
that brought them down.

It’s already too late
to change the consequences.
Now we’re facing the fourth gulf, a big hole,
like the canyons the dinosaurs perished in,
that this misguided country
is racing, unstoppably, toward.