[Peace-discuss] Newspoem September 2013

[Carl G. Estabrook]

NATIONAL PUPPET RADIO

They have no halitosis though
their mouths are stuffed with corpses.
Spewing nasal spectacled listerine equivocations,
bovine orators masticate today's content
spewing a bland cud of stocks slaughter and yogurt.

100,000 dead? Obama wants in,
Blood in the water, chief executive shark
swimming into the gulf flanked by warships,
clinging to their hulls the soulless barnacles
of National Parasite Radio sponsored by FOX Broadcasting Company.

Nerve gas! Such a crude example of quashing dissent
makes this somnolent propaganda look weak-willed
and threatens our monopoly on chemical weapons,
human rights violation, death tolls, 
and burning public money in the desert.

We've rehearsed your part since 1991
joker face making of the murders you discuss
a dull background patter suitable for washing the
privilege off our dishes as your robotic illiberal voices 
wash civilians' blood off our leaders' hands .

National Pusillanimous Radio sponsored by Citibank.

Somewhere a white person has cancer!

Frank objectivity, combative debate: 
one advises cautionary war 
another demands a pre-emptive war
another disagrees, advocates a preventative war
another pleads war with congressional support
still another requests war with international support 
(well, obviously, not international support, but maybe we can get France?) 

Lockheed Martin: we never forget who we’re working for.

Not so fast, guys. We could also look at a smaller war,
a war made out of vases of cut flowers, kittens, 
and bereavement cards. Let's not forget the amazing 
healing power of surgical strikes (we aren't advocating 
free surgery to the uninsured, incidentally, but 
clean, precise, sterile explosions of munitions,
or, barring that, surgically edited coverage of horrific bombings). 

We want to make sure all our options are on the table:
tasteful war, monotone war, inoffensive war, or we could be 
looking at a clean war, an air-conditioned war, a figurative war
that's also a literal war, a war with frosted roses, a gluten-free war,
a war based on a best-selling book, a twee ukelele duo war, 
a Shakespearean war starring Gwyneth Paltrow, or even a cruel war.
An unnecessary vicious murderous arrogant world-destroying war.
In other words, war. We're looking at every option.

But one caller who thinks war is murder, and murder is unjustifiable, 
who thinks we're better than that, that we need to heal our country,
adopt an isolationist stance, disarm our nuclear warheads,
is still on hold, a blinking light on the switchboard that, no matter
how fiercely ignored, refuses to hang up. May this blinking light
throb behind their eyelids, burning their retinas, when they try to sleep.

...
--William Gillespie 
<http://keyholefactory.com>