Free-dumb.

Free-dumb
by james bezerra


It is strange to see
that democracy
is spreading all across my TV
in lands by the desert and lands by the sea

While concurrently,
and also on my TV,
I see
the former Defense Secretary,
good old Rummy.

He is out whoring for his new book.
His glance is still steely,
but in his look
I see a new arrogance; almost celebratory.

Because, you see,
he seems to believe that he -
and W. and Rice and Cheney -
were right about democracy
and people who live by deserts
and people who live by the sea.
As if the fact that people want to be free
was a secret and only he’d had the key.
As if – through protests in Cairo and riots in Tripoli –
he’s finally getting his just desserts.

As if all those bombs we dropped
were loaded full of liberty
and we just never hit the right Iraqi.
As if all our American supremacy
and psychic energy
had radiated out and never stopped.

As if democracy
was time-released
on the Middle East.
And while Iraq may have proved a quagmire,
there is certainly much to admire
in the streets of Cairo and on the shores of Tripoli.

It seems that Rummy
doesn’t seem to see
that Facebook fomented more revolutionary
fervor than did the American military.
He seems to think it might
be possible that by taking the fight
to Bagdad, we somehow got our righteous might
spattered all over every country in the arid Middle E.

I look at old Rummy -
his hair is still perfect and gray -
as he says on TV
that nothing can get in the way
of democracy.

Even – I want to say -
the dictators to whom we give money?
Or our tear gas they spray
at their own citizenry?
It seems like maybe we have been in the way.

But Rummy,
he doesn’t reply to me,
he just smiles implacably
and hocks his book
and there in his look
I can see
the self-satisfied glee
as he congratulates himself for the bravery
that it took
to spread liberty
and Democracy –
with its big shimmering D -
to every cranny and nook
of the backward Middle E.

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