Looking for work, 1980’s America,
I learned about fortunes available
on Iraq and Iran borderland,
where keeping Sunnis and Shi-ites at war
with one another, promised security
in the Zionist Promised land,
and sufficient pressure for oil companies
to continue raising prices for diesel and gas.
Oliver North –
a household name to indoctrinated citizens
like me, “Ollie” passionately defended exchange
of arms for hostages before U.S. Senators,
and with Greenspan “hand bills” in pocket,
off to Tigris and Euphrates Valley I went,
unashamed, I was there for Iraq crude booty.
Iraq and Iran War over, come 1991,
I read in The Ancient New Baghdad Times
about Saddam Hussein’s plan to conquer Kuwait,
kick neighbors out of Iraq’s oilfield range.
I assumed US satellite monitoring systems
of Iraq troop movement (east) were on blink,
and Ambassador Glaspie’s “green light”
to Saddam, formed shaky prelude to Desert Storm.
With solid UN references, I applied for job
operating bull dozer for military mass burial
of Saddam’s slaughtered “Republican Guard.”
Waited, waited for interview summons
for a job with ‘Stormin’ Norman,
all in vain, the General refused, explained,
“Bull dozer burial jobs require vast experience,
strong stomachs.”
In meantime, with economic sanctions
and “No Fly Zone” enforcement
throughout Saddam’s Iraq,
I kept fingers crossed, converted to Islam,
was hired for work in date orchards,
but my 1965 Ford pick-up got caught-up
in CIA vs. Baathist cross-fire,
tires went flat, and like a stranded muezzin,
I cried out to Clinton’s Whitewater god for help.
Alas, to Zionist Likud consternation,
Saddam Hussein doled-out lots of money
to Palestinian martyrs,
and had no extra dinars to give me.
He refused granting Iraq oil contracts
to Exxon-Mobil and such ilk,
and after 9/11 terror attacks,
I tried to warn about G.W. Bush’s
Gathering Wrath, what’s next on sour Agenda.
Still looking for work, I offered to help hide
his massive W.M.D. stockpile,
and Saddam consolingly replied,
“Uh, Charles, how does one hide what’s not here?”
March 19, 2003, in nervous Baghdad,
while employed as “Temp,” making good dinar
translating Koran into NYSE dialect,
suddenly … I witnessed “limited” bombing
begin upon Saddam’s “Presidential Palace.”
Later during day,
I spoke with one of Saddam’s scattered “doubles”
who explained how, at hour of US onslaught,
the dictator watched his favorite US film,
The Godfather (1972),
the part where Santino (Sonny) arrived
at a toll booth checkpoint, got sprayed
by competing mobster machine-gum fire.
Today, back home from “liberated” Iraq
under attack by ISIS, and unemployed,
I looked at Tom Joad’s “Facebook” page.
Tom killed a man with shovel at a dance,
later-on, killed by California Coalition Forces
during an orchard worker strike.
My god, December 30, 2006,
what world wide T.V. spectacle,
Saddam’s Christmas Eve lynching!
History down a Baghdad street man hole –
The true enemy of America?
Epidemic-level INSOUCIANCY and
our elected dictators who pass out
devalued hand-bills, advise avid Steinbeck fans
to inform on one another, “shop-’til-you-drop.”