Monday, June 27, 2005
Watching CNN On Drugs
by Michael Dennis Mooney
"I had to have an operation last week and had
the unique experience of being laid-up in the
hospital watching CNN on drugs."
-- Senator John Kerry, Spring 2003
All the banks in Baghdad have been looted.
Mobs with guns pushed right past the guards.
They're throwing piles of dinars in the air,
Tearing 100-dinar notes like confetti,
Each one bearing a likeness of Saddam.
No one in Baghdad can write a check
To pay a bill, or to pay for anything.
There is no money in any of the banks.
The archives, likewise, have been looted.
There are no records left of any deeds to property.
No one can sell a property or dispute a claim.
One might as well lay claim to the four winds.
The National Library of History has been emptied.
Ancient manuscripts and books there all are gone.
The books have been stolen by ignoramuses.
The Museum of Antiquities has been sacked,
7,000 year-old stone tablets, statues, urns,
All are gone. Old Hammurabi surely made a law --
But then Old Hammurabi's gone among the lawless!
A garbage truck's flying erratically down the street.
Even garbage is part of the looters' haul.
No hospital in this city can do surgery.
Besides the fact there is no electricity,
Too much equipment here was stolen
By angry mobs who smashed what they couldn't take.
A taxi, doors flung open, careening, stops.
A dead body is lying on its back seat.
This taxi is the new impromptu ambulance.
The ambulances have been stolen by the looters.
Nineteen thousand bombs have fallen these three weeks,
And no hospital in Baghdad can do surgery.
The doctors curse a blue streak; they carry pistols;
The nurses walk around in tears.
At the Ministry of Health the refrigerators
Holding the key vaccines for the whole country
Have been unplugged, stolen for quick-buck resale.
Being guarded by U.S. troops, the Ministry of Oil
(Unlike Education and Health being laid waste to)
Does not have all its assets safe from the locust plague.
Resourceful looters are themselves drilling for oil.
They are drilling holes in the pipeline in the desert
And carrying drums of the black goop away,
To be used for home heating and for sale.
Many of the looters are now feeling guilty
And turning in their booty at the mosques
Where it is being registered by clerics,
A chandelier here, there a gold plated faucet.
The city is one giant lego set
Kicked under the bed, scattered to pieces.
It'll never be put back together the same.
Now that the place has been wrecked beyond recognition,
A crime far worse than Al Qaeda's attack on New York,
Now comes the era of reconstruction!
The U.S. Army holds a big public meeting
For civil servants who want to go back to work
(Police in this line, engineers here, doctors over there.)
They'll get paid in U.S. dollars. Iraq will be the fifty-first state
For years, its twenty-three million people on welfare.
Children in hospitals, peppered with shrapnel,
Fingers blown off, need not apply for the new prosperity.
What are the chances that George W. Bush's can-do army
Would roll into Newark, Detroit, or South Central L.A.
And say, Let's all get together and go to work,
Let's spend billions from our treasury,
Let's make things permanently better
And put a smile on the face of the people?
[April, 2003]
shrub's second 'naugural
after e.e. cummings
mista and missus dumbass americans
this day january twentyish is the first day
of the resta yer bush administrayshun
and i mr g dubya dumbass the second
am delighted to take the lead as yer dumbass in chief
we need to provide more security for our peoples
and hep the economy by gettin rid of needle-less paperwork
plus southern fried english will become the official lingo
of these here united dumbass states
[note: shrub = junior bush]
"I had to have an operation last week and had
the unique experience of being laid-up in the
hospital watching CNN on drugs."
-- Senator John Kerry, Spring 2003
All the banks in Baghdad have been looted.
Mobs with guns pushed right past the guards.
They're throwing piles of dinars in the air,
Tearing 100-dinar notes like confetti,
Each one bearing a likeness of Saddam.
No one in Baghdad can write a check
To pay a bill, or to pay for anything.
There is no money in any of the banks.
The archives, likewise, have been looted.
There are no records left of any deeds to property.
No one can sell a property or dispute a claim.
One might as well lay claim to the four winds.
The National Library of History has been emptied.
Ancient manuscripts and books there all are gone.
The books have been stolen by ignoramuses.
The Museum of Antiquities has been sacked,
7,000 year-old stone tablets, statues, urns,
All are gone. Old Hammurabi surely made a law --
But then Old Hammurabi's gone among the lawless!
A garbage truck's flying erratically down the street.
Even garbage is part of the looters' haul.
No hospital in this city can do surgery.
Besides the fact there is no electricity,
Too much equipment here was stolen
By angry mobs who smashed what they couldn't take.
A taxi, doors flung open, careening, stops.
A dead body is lying on its back seat.
This taxi is the new impromptu ambulance.
The ambulances have been stolen by the looters.
Nineteen thousand bombs have fallen these three weeks,
And no hospital in Baghdad can do surgery.
The doctors curse a blue streak; they carry pistols;
The nurses walk around in tears.
At the Ministry of Health the refrigerators
Holding the key vaccines for the whole country
Have been unplugged, stolen for quick-buck resale.
Being guarded by U.S. troops, the Ministry of Oil
(Unlike Education and Health being laid waste to)
Does not have all its assets safe from the locust plague.
Resourceful looters are themselves drilling for oil.
They are drilling holes in the pipeline in the desert
And carrying drums of the black goop away,
To be used for home heating and for sale.
Many of the looters are now feeling guilty
And turning in their booty at the mosques
Where it is being registered by clerics,
A chandelier here, there a gold plated faucet.
The city is one giant lego set
Kicked under the bed, scattered to pieces.
It'll never be put back together the same.
Now that the place has been wrecked beyond recognition,
A crime far worse than Al Qaeda's attack on New York,
Now comes the era of reconstruction!
The U.S. Army holds a big public meeting
For civil servants who want to go back to work
(Police in this line, engineers here, doctors over there.)
They'll get paid in U.S. dollars. Iraq will be the fifty-first state
For years, its twenty-three million people on welfare.
Children in hospitals, peppered with shrapnel,
Fingers blown off, need not apply for the new prosperity.
What are the chances that George W. Bush's can-do army
Would roll into Newark, Detroit, or South Central L.A.
And say, Let's all get together and go to work,
Let's spend billions from our treasury,
Let's make things permanently better
And put a smile on the face of the people?
[April, 2003]
shrub's second 'naugural
after e.e. cummings
mista and missus dumbass americans
this day january twentyish is the first day
of the resta yer bush administrayshun
and i mr g dubya dumbass the second
am delighted to take the lead as yer dumbass in chief
we need to provide more security for our peoples
and hep the economy by gettin rid of needle-less paperwork
plus southern fried english will become the official lingo
of these here united dumbass states
[note: shrub = junior bush]
