Synonyms & Scotch

I live in Washington, DC. There are a lot of fancy words and acronyms continually churned into hot air here. Most of it rises out of Capitol Hill and from a specific residence on Pennsylvania Avenue and gets blown up our rear ends. Twice this week (and it’s only Tuesday) I’ve heard young congressional staffers assert that ending the war in Iraq is not a relevant 2008 presidential campaign issue anymore as the “Surge” has been a success. The economic condition is the focus of the country’s political attention; the need to ease the American family’s suffering over mortgage shock and from the ever so prevalent pain of putting gas in the SUV. I agree that our economic condition is critical. However, I don’t know, and may be it’s only me being me, but I think getting your ass blown off would prove a lot more painful than getting stupidly over-extended on a bad loan or having to walk a little more and drive a little less.

Perhaps we should ask some of the veterans who have returned from Iraq with fewer body parts than they possessed before they were sent to fight for…I forget…what was it they were sent there to fight for? Oh yeah, they were supposed to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction. No, no, no. That’s not what the war’s about. It’s about liberation. Whose liberation? No, no, no. That’s not the reason. It’s about our freedom. That’s what the spinners on ol’ Penn. Ave. keep blowing our way. We’re in Iraq fighting for the greatest and penultimate term used in the American doctrine; freedom. But this current, supposed reason for the war in Iraq – our freedom – that’s been declared an irrelevant issue in the 2008 campaign for what was once viewed as the highest seat in the “free” world.

I would say I can’t believe it, but I do. Of course it pisses me off. I want to kick a brick, punch a block, grab, squeeze and shake political necks until their lying eyes pop out of their bullshit spouting heads. But I am, like god, war and this country, inaccurate with my rage, and can only comment on how we need a change. Isn’t that the term Obama was saying just awhile ago; the language of change? If talking about the war and freedom is no longer relevant, perhaps we should start by changing the language of freedom.

As our country prepares to celebrate the anniversary of its declared liberation on July 4th, I have an acquaintance who will forgo the party, and instead, will mourn the 3rd July that has come since his daughter’s death in Iraq. I don’t know words that could ease the pain for American families like his. So, I’m going to work on developing some new language skills. I’m going to use old words like, peace, freedom, honesty, responsibility, and integrity, like they are new words, like they are relevant words that merit the foremost consideration and eloquent enunciation in the 2008 campaign for leader of the free world. And I am going to sing them as loud as I can until I am joined in harmony or I go hoarse from trying.

Newspeak

Do you know
I do not talk American?
I cannot speak American,
and therefore cannot answer
to this Tin Man’s war
chattering in stethoscopes
behind the Bush denying
all evidencing bodies
of our dying atmosphere.

Do you see
I have no tongue in American?
I cannot say in American
the wonk’s work is wicked,
and, therefore, must use my fingers
to point at what I mean to them
and such gestures are often misconstrued
for like: There he is. Shoot.
You missed a spot.

Do you care
I do not know American?
I cannot affect an American
accent. It makes my lips spout sores
when I respond, Hey, hombre,
your yard is finished,
we’ll take cash, your huddled masses
the wretched refuse teeming on your floor.

Do you get
I do not understand American?
I cannot parlez vous American
and cannot partake in sordid conversation
or ask permission to be excused
even though I am held in view
the un-better child seen who cannot say
I’d rather be left behind.

Do you follow
I cannot relate my past in American?
I cannot pretend a voice American
telling la nostra storia
my mother’s journey
flowing from the fountain Neapolitan diaspora
with just her soft tufo stone tongue
a shattered village effort
and a vine of hope.

Do you think
I could not hear a new American?
I could re-cipher an old code American,
be proud as a founding father
espousing how to adopt the words
we yearn to claim our own;
the science of panagglutinin,
the construction of quiggly holes,
schmusn on ye’ old musaphone.

And in turn transform the speech of sectarian speakers,
of obtuse deciders swinging their sticks
at little balls, huge white women humming
in trucks massively destructive
while giving 51 cents a day
so the last child in Somalia
can eat while reading
the fin on the un-detonated metal
protruding from his home.

There are so many who don’t understand that American,
and the American that twice asked for that American.
That American lickspit
uttering a boat of cloth,
weaving over a war
that isn’t yet composed,
that is the ultimate battle
between fact and fiction,
and the American that swallowed that boat
is as thick as rap in Latin.

Though it translates plainly into the universal of talking shit.
Even I, with so little language know the sound of that prattle.

Will you pardon
that I do not speak that American?
I refuse to learn that American.
Its horrid grammar lies
behind the reason I asked
“do you” instead of its “don’t you”
in the first six stanzas
of this verse.