[Newspoetry] Mal-calm in the Middle East

[emerick at chorus.net]

Please remain calm,
project an image of confidence and strength,
when disaster strikes you on the ear
with its already diaried news,
a whisper in your ear.

An attending aide has heard the news,
which would be strange to his ear,
but never simply so stunning,
as only stranger words could be news,
when familiars never make headlines,
or leave worry lines as tracks
on snowy airwaves of whiter pages.
News whispers into his own ear,
outside the thronged classroom,
where a shrubbing President is on display,
sitting in with well-scrubbed kids.

Spit on and polish up this image,
for here is an iconic intellect
showing kids how well he can read
and laugh at an amusing fairy tale
as laughter is to reading what love is to sex,
a learned mark of alluring civility,
a wink and a nudge between like minds
so like bodies respond reciprocally.

It is vital to read the lines
to be amusingly entertained by a well-crafted text, following plot-forming dotted lines,
identifying with sham-poo characters,
heroes never strand alone for long,
between opening and closing lines,
in turmoil, rumble, or strain
for more than a few moments:
all will end well enough,
an implied infinite bliss,
a happily-ever-after abyss.

"Mr. President, a plane has struck
the towers of the World Trade Center;
the building burns, people are dying."

The President frowns a little,
but waves the aides away,
and smiles down at the kids.
The story is too interesting
to interrupt with such trivia
from the liberal media,
their ever-streaming, never-ending stories,
their news is but the noisy gossip of the ages,
not the great history of still greater men.

"Remain calm, poised and dignified;
look like a knowing tower of decisive strength:
the people should never see you panic,
nor run away, in hiding, from any foe."

The President turns an illustrated leaf over,
and consults images on yet another page,
finds soothing words and reads them, aloud.

The buzz in the hallways saws more loudly
the dry wood of the classroom,
floors and walls, pencils and papers,
desks and heads begin to lean away,
no longer quaintly nodding, faintly smiling.

A trembling aide sweeps through,
gathering dust and ashes
to heap upon his meddlesome self, 
for daring to interrupt again
the great Chief of the Western World
with yet more disturbing news
from the wider western world.

"Mr. President..." His low voice insinuates
its hushed tones in camoflagued syllables,
sound bites as carefully drained of meaning
as swamps of their foul and fetid fertility...
"another plane has struck the other tower."

The disturbance of a President is a crime
that only a President can pardon,
at his pleasure, and at his leisure --
but that time is not now.

The President almost scowls,
in glint of anger, but recovers and
regains his composure for a composition
whose ending is yet unknown to him,
one that lies within his reading comprehension,
here on the few last pages of his stirring novel.

He waves away the troubador's doom-saying;
he waives away responding to disaster looming.
"I must remain calm;
it's vital to my image;
they will imagine me
as I portray me to be."

And so the story goes on...
the towers fell,
but he remained calm --
they hustled him hurriedly away,
but he was not to be seen running,
for it is not dignified or poised,
to be seen in a haste,
hair blowing askew, arms akimbo,
as if hounds from hell had caught your scent,
were baying loudly on your smell, trail behind.

Remain calm, poised and dignified,
appear to be a tower of strength,
as you flee to AirForce One,
and pass on to Cheney vague orders,
do something to look good in the news,
devise and do something presidential --
but remain calm and collected, too,
so you will be well recollected
as a tower of strength
when others towers fell.