Boobie Short-Order Prime Ministers

Apropos of "the Five O'Clock Memo" posted previously, I just read where the Bad Puppet Maliki had cancelled his latest short-order "meeting" with Deputy Dubya Bush amid leaked memos from American National Security officials suspiciously circulating Ngo-Dinh-Diem-type coup rumors in America's (and therefore the world's) largest government mouthpiece newspapers. I thought of writing a poem about the transparently humiliating episode, but then realized that I already had done so earlier this year. As Frances Fitzgerald said somewhere in Fire in the Lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam, the longer a war goes on, sooner or later it can only begin and continue to repeat itself. Most definitely so.

Hence, another episode in my unfolding malignant opus in progress: "Fernando Po, U.S.A.," an epic rip-off of Lewis Carroll's "the Walrus and the Carpenter," exploring the post-linguistic primitivism once found only on backwater islands that time forgot but now endemic to entire continents that have forgotten time. So, without further preamble, let us go back to the future with:

"Boobie Short-Order Prime Ministers"

George summoned their prime minister
To take a conference call
A "sovereign" for two years now
George really had a ball
In using him for wallpaper
Which really took some gall

Inside the Green Zone Castle where
The puppets spend their day
The visiting American
Was questioned in this way:
"How would you like your PM, sir?"
And George said: "Right away!"

"I've had a lot of practice at
This poodle thing, you know.
Just ask the British Tony Blair
Whom I have kept in tow
So long that his own parliament
Would like him now to go."

Those new Iraqi ministers
Who sometimes come to work
Through checkpoint mazes mostly manned
By some young GI jerk
Have learned that we will treat them like
A fast-food counter clerk

"We've got 'em by the short hairs now,"
The short-haired George let slip
"We come and go just when we please
And don't take any lip
From 'sovereigns' who need to know
Few details of our trip."

By this disdain George clearly showed
A fundamental knack
For treating the entire world
To spectacles that lack
The least regard for protocol:
For who respects a flack?

Of course the point at issue had
Just this insult to show
To fanboy fascists rapt at home
Before the TV's glow
Who thrilled as George's posing made
Their little weenies grow

Just like the days of Nguyen Kao Ky
And Ngo Dinh Diem who
Preceded in a puppet show
The stalwart Nguyen Van Thieu:
Parades of puppet "presidents"
Humiliated, too

But disrespected puppets have
A way of getting back
At puerile puppeteers who think
Their strings contain no slack
They simply lay down on the job
Or else join the attack

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006