Newspoem.

3 June 2002

Twenty Lines for Jim Simmerman

A metaphor:

High ranking elements of the US government had foreknowledge of the crimes of September 11th and chose not to act to prevent them in order that the killing of Americans be spun to generate popular support for a premeditated military invasion of Afghanistan to fulfill the economic agenda of control of remaining global oil reserves (given that the oil rich regions of the former Soviet republic could be most easily exploited by means of a pipeline running through Afghanistan thereby circumventing Russia and China)

It all smells like a fishy red white and blue guitar solo but tastes like blood oozing from the wound of a freshly extracted tooth by which I mean the long-suffering citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq

It is a guitar solo, compelling only in its inevitability, etched against the night sky like an unabashedly garish Independence Day firework display

It is conveniently, though perhaps not entirely accurately, personified by President Bush in Washington D.C.

Well maybe not a guitar solo but a brassy march

Mail bombs are bad for postal workers and for mail artists

Buzzkill, literally

Terrorism causes SUVs

Work it

The shattered steel reinforced concrete of peace

The towers in flames are surrounded by firemen wielding high-pressure hoses to douse the inferno in crude oil

President Bush has just read every word of a very large and difficult book about the world and all its cultures and now has a plan for peace

Bill, you asshole

We will rewrite the entire world

The pizza me and Mike ordered back around line 6 is so far entirely unsubstantiated

The terrorists are evil and you are either with them or with President Bush and the network of financial interests dictating foreign and domestic policy his persona stands in for in this poem

Sieg Heil

The oil is lying awake tonight, weeping over the precious blood that has been wasted on its behalf

The oil is weeping.


Newspoetry at Spineless Books