Mother of All Fucking Bombs
Witness now the price
of this cowardly new world
we live in:
36 lives and the biggest fucking
bomb in the world.
But what’s the price of a single life?
There’s no price for a single life
(you’re-not-worth-a-fuck, she said).
See this man rising up from his prayers
like a mushroom cloud
rising in the sky
“the sky in flames”
and “tremors on the ground“,
Thursday, 13th April, at 7:32 p.m. local time.
This must be the price.
Despite 7 and a half billion people
hanging on
the edge of a map,
on the hard face of a rock
under a shrinking sun,
this “boat in a storm”
this land where “the heavens are falling”
this land where even the mountains weep
and the fields are forever filled
with poppies.
What’s the name then for a few million dead
in their careless wars,
in this endless-long march of the cruel
where the heavens burst open
where death rains like a disease
“the earth feels like a boat in a storm”
Mohammad Shahzadah says,
in a desert, in a fucking desert, of all places
…a man rising to his feet
like a mushroom cloud rising
In the sky
“my ears are deaf
my windows broken,
the walls are cracked”
somewhere, in eastern Afghanistan
third planet from the sun,
close to Moman village, in an area called Asadkhe
(“it gives us a lot of pleasure to kill them”
the soldiers will say later),
another agony on holidays
this body made only for bullets.
What’s the name
for this brave new world we live in
where the children still herd cattle in the fields?
No name, no-name.
But the bomb, the-fucking-Bomb gets a name:
moab-the-celebrity
moab-the-bomb dropping-out-of-the-sky
moab-the-walls-shake
moab the children naked where there is nowhere left to hide
moab – mother-fucking O, my absolute-bewilderment!
moab – monstrous and official O, this awe-inspiring-bloodshed!
moab, like Ahab’s whale, cursed.
moab – Massive. Ordnance. Air. Blast. Bomb.
moab – lights the air on fire.
Abominable.
Obscene.
Blasphemy.
Cursed again and again.
What’s the price of this cruel new world we live in?
90 lives now and the biggest bomb ever.
What’s the price, over and over,
314 million dollars and a million lives wasted.
What’s the name of all those lost?
No name,
only name now this media star
“mother of all bombs”
the GBU-43/B,
$170,000-a-go,
one more American citizen in a world
where borders only matter
for those trapped in their flight
those seeking refuge
from the bomb,
His Excellency, The Bomb
GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast,
MOAB, my God,
most powerful weapon in existence
30 feet long,
9,800kg (21,000 pounds) heavy
8,164kg of explosive
equivalent to 11 US tons of TNT
guided to its target by GPS
slowed by parachute
blast radius a mile wide
sending a lethal shock wave more than a mile and a half away
dropped from the arse of an MC-130 special operations transport
explodes before hitting the ground
destroys everything, everything, do you hear me?
Can anyone fucking hear me?
What a world
there in the mountains
while here in my small house
at the sharp edge of the sky
in my house close to the birdsong
with their small wings forever in flight
in this country of the heart
where everything
is broken and, there too,
in the mountains, where
Mohammad Shahzadah is still rising
(like a mushroom cloud)
rising from his prayers.
séamas carraher
14 april – 26 april 2017
Image:
The guided bomb unit-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb prototype is shown moments before impact. The detonation created a mushroom cloud that could be seen 20 miles away.
Date Taken on 11 March 2003
By U.S. Air Force [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMOABtest.jpg
References:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/14/afghanistan-bomb-trump-finds-keys-family-gun-cabinet
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39607213
Video:
MOAB – Mother of All Bombs GBU-43/B (tested 2003)
Afghans React To ‘Horrific Bomb’ In Nangarhar Province https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZlDct1EYRM
US CENTCOM releases video of MOAB attack against ISIS in Afghanistan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Q-CMXLSvk
Related Articles
Slavoj Žižek: ‘Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots’
A genius with the answers to the financial crisis? Or the Borat of philosophy? The cultural theorist talks about love,
ON A DAY THIS WEEK, IN NOVEMBER, 1990
On a day this week, the 11th November, 1990, the Greek poet, communist and political prisoner, Yannis Ritsos died in Athens
Qatari Poet Muhammad Al Ajami, Serving 15-year Sentence, Pardoned by Emir
Qatari poet Muhammad al-Ajami — who was the target of an international solidarity movement because of his 15-year prison sentence — has been pardoned
