Secondary Targeting

Signal lost, the black drone soars

In widening circles ’midst the electronic roar

Data falls apart; the entry cannot hold

Anarchy splashes the electric shore

Independent targeting’s loose, and everywhere

The innocents’ cries are drowned and thrust aside

Honour and truth left speechless and derided

While warlords and tyrants thrive

In the killing frenzy their passion breeds.

Surely some SigInt is at hand;

Surely a Second Targeting is at hand

SecondaryTargeting! Hardly is the data entered

When satellite mapping pierces night

And shows a desert wasteland

A jackal-painted tank rolls through it

Its gaze pitiless and piercing as a laser sight

Moving its treads, threading the rut

While all about the sand chokes indignant lizards.

The mapping drops offscreen again but now I know

That after twenty-one centuries of stony silence

We’ve breached God’s own lazy sleep

Too late to halt the demon’s reach.

Oh what rough Demon, finds primetime at last

Slouching towards fame and worship?