THE WARTIME ISSUE

Sunil Freeman

 

WHEN THE TERRORISTS GET CREATIVE

When the terrorists get creative, they'll burn
hip hop video remixes of Dubya & Co.'s hits.
Young Rumsfeld shakes hands with Saddam;
they're cut from the same cloth and know it,
cutthroat smiles all around. Pirates copy and take
their loot; the terrorists aren't in it for money,
unlike Dubya & Co., so DVDs circle the globe,
and the whole world is laughing, America.

See Condi. See Condi lie. Lie, Condi, lie.
See Condi spin. See Condi's smash hit remix,
August 6, 2001. It's global music, quite the rage.
"I Believe the Title Was . . . " whoppa whoppa whop
a turntable spins and Condi goes reverse then back
again      I believe      leave     leave     leave     leave.

Tidal waves of Yankee Go Home signs flood the screen;
Nixon is mobbed in Venezuela. Two crucifixion shapes
strobe, superimpose, merge: the man on the box
in Abu Ghraib, American mercenaries, burned corpses
strung up on a bridge over the river Euphrates, cradle
of civilization. They're morphed to bring home
an old lesson: What goes around comes around.  
I believe   leave   leave   leave   leave   leave   leave.
Wounded Knee    My Lai    Sabra and Shatila   Fallujah.
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

And the world is laughing at our new world disorder,
America, the world is crying, blossoming with bombs.
Bring em on, bring em on, bring em bring em bring em on
the madman says. He twitches and smirks, freezes,
stares with his hollow, scary eyes, smiles into a void
no one else can want to see when the shock
and the awe finally come home to roost.

 

 

Sunil Freeman has two books of poems, That Would Explain the Violinist (Gut Punch Press, 1993) and Surreal Freedom Blues (Argonne Hotel Press, 1999).  More recently, he has appeared on The Coffee House (Montgomery Cable TV), on the Poetry Alive at Iota CD, and has poems forthcoming in Gargoyle. His poems have appeared previously in Beltway. He has worked as a volunteer with the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) since this last summer.

Published in Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2006.

 

To read more by this author:
Sunil Freeman
Sunil Freeman on The Writer's Center: Literary Organizations Issue