The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh, Spring 2013 – in a dark cold gallery far down in the lower bay of Biscayne, assembled are a D.O.D. Spokesman flanked by T.S.A. attorneys, nervous, dressed in black Victoria Secret petticoats & flag lapels. The announcement centered on changing official “interrogation methods,” both foreign & domestic, and discontinuation of “waterboarding,” in favor of a more productive & impressive system of information acquisition. When questioned by long-neck reporters, the spokesman emphasized D.O.D. had developed a system that “worked better,” and just a moment ago prevented an imminent attack on a U.S. Base south of Teheran, and possible trouble in a landing field at Le Bourget. The spokesman, Honest John Spensky, in middle forties, took a drag on cigarette, blew smoke in faces of face-painted reporters, stated, “our new method brilliantly illustrates intelligence data that is immediate, actionable, and much more promising than “waterboarding” techniques which fell out of favor & gave a bad aftertaste for some wussie-Congress of R.N.C. /D.N.C. contributors.
I, a luke-warm abolitionist, was there & pressed Mr. Spensky for detail.
If not now, I thought, when…when?
How many before me? How many? I screamed.
How many soft-reporters broke faith with Waterboarding too soon?
I waited for stressed Mr. Spensky’s response, waited indefinitely.
3 and half years later, spasms in my throat, there was too much security,
smell of gunpowder in air, National Guard patrolled Disneyland –
they terrified me, I yelled at empty roller-coaster chairs,
Land of Make Believe energies, a more robust Rat-Race, a day when workers
advance, meet their Boss, feel giddy, they smile when production goals are met,
they call dying a life, don’t talk peace, economic solution are ultimate resort.
Honest John Spensky, I said, you received gifts from me… my ears,
endless twitters “OBL is killed,” a pound of conscience flesh,
I closed my mind when an author wrote “Closing of the American Mind,”
and I think about all those “waterboarding” classes I attended in Kauai,
waves of surfboards pounded me below Nip-destroyer hulls, poor tongue,
I could not report truth if it bit me.
On the bottom of River Potomac, there my tongue held back,
had money in a machine called Mac, swam with the deep-pocket pack.
Pressed, pressed like a South American expatriate gorilla on loose,
Honest John Spensky lay upon floor like an ordained priest, spoke old Slavonic,
Han accent, and described Amerika’s new “interrogation method,” a DVD, thusly…
“Riding skinny buffalo, shooting quail, Rolex watches beneath X-mas trees,
there are no more stars of Bethlehem, a captured Little Duck speaks with
a President on the day missiles mistakenly plunged into Bayer aspirin factories,
& on You Tube, a Little Duck’s story multiplied, went viral, it’s wings wet,
ponderous, it made people talk, did not allow either smoke or bathroom breaks –
So D.O.D. realized it’s power over people, broke them down spic & span,
the Little Duck Spoke for the Bloke’s Last Buck, trained detainees to act like leaders,
“spill the beans,” Little Duck is 52 % higher in polls than depraved animal,
un-Amerikan, Bradley Manning… torture by fairy tale, a bronze truth serum,
lazy memory re-call, all DVDs shown with audio component, Springsteen’s
‘We take care of our own,’ plays softly, incessantly, until citizens understand
humaneness is less than advertised
Do I, when gorgeous Torture-Broads
incrementally drop water upon my face 300-times,
do I actually have a stake in keeping Police State secrets?
The Titanic carried 1,320 passengers who took on water,
never favored air-travel, and for what? they never attacked anyone.
Would it be nobler for one like me to be quietly drowned
in Tigris River, nearby the billion dollar American Embassy?
After waterboarding, I find peace, I have it all, in “the middle,”
I make my own choices about body, health care, contraception,
women care for me, drones faithfully follow me,
& to the God of Underwater Freedom, Lakes of Oil, Seas of Lithium,
I go down gradually on knees, there’s nothing more heroic
than playing chicken, paying bills, spilling guts to Mr. Spensky.