[Newspoetry] In the Streets, a Shadow Lifts

[William Gillespie]

the real saddam hussein leans over my shoulder as i type this
his breath smells like bourbon, sand flies, and mass graves
he points at this poem and corrects it, speaking a french i can’t 
understand

we woke up in bed together  astonished when the classical music 
announcer
in between blocks of trendy 19th century european art music
on my clock radio announced that saddam hussein had been captured

hussein chuckled as he read the account of his capture on the front of 
the times
“humiliating...fallen....disheveled old...hapless 
disoriented...cringing....mythic...pitiable 
mumbling....obediently...passively...straggly”
at the word “impotence” he bellowed and for an awkward second i thought 
he might disprove it

that photo looks like shit, he says, they airbrushed bags under my eyes 
to make me look less magisterial
hey but at least i look smarter than bush, when is he going to be old 
enough to grow a beard
dude you look like santa,  i say, i love to piss him off

heh, they’re going to give me a fair trial, he says, and i mouth the 
tired punchline with him:
but the us doesn’t recognize the international criminal court
better not ask too many questions about my atrocities in the eighties, 
he chuckles

he claps me on the shoulder, what do you say, should i call off the 
resistance
yeah right, i say, why don’t you call off that toothpaste fast, tom 
cruise
why don’t you call off that breath of mass destruction, sad, damn!

this is going to make bush popular again, he warns
i don’t care if it does, i hope he’s more popular than ketchup
as long as he isn’t reelected and nobody he knows holds public office 
until tikrit freezes over

admittedly it’s shocking to me when something in this war unexpectedly 
goes right
i wish they had kept the museum from being sacked, now there’s barely 
room to move in here
but i can’t help but wonder whether it’s true, in which case i am 
sleeping with an imposter who snores

i know from the works of franken and savage
that if bill o’reilly read this poem he would go on tv and angrily say 
i'm sleeping with saddam hussein
but it’s not like that bill, this is newspoetry, we don’t have 
impeccable journalistic ethics like fox news, anyway it’s a big bed

i didn’t say we were spooning

yes but where’s osama, “saddam” chuckles, lighting another cigar
he’s the one you really want them to catch, he coughs
osama is downstairs in 308, hiding in the closet, we both know that

.