New Haiku on DeenPort 1/11/07

We burn the town down…
then we send in more fire trucks
to patrol the smoke?

It’s the morning after The Decider’s decision to wreak more havoc in Iraq, with massive collateral damage (by western soldiers, never mind their own strife-killings) unreported by the western media, masses more American soldiers either dead or maimed for life, also hidden away from the public eye, and a President, who, sorry, is looking more and more like the “What Me Worry?” Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Comics (and this was not a willed hallucination on my part, but at some point in his televised speech that face emerged from his own…).

Somehow these quick haiku almost have more potential for impact than the miles of words we’re hearing from both sides of the issue… “send more,” “bring them back…” “we don’t know…” I’m at a loss myself… yesterday watching the sparrows outside my window at the birdfeeder instead. They don’t start wars. They may argue a little over the perches…

But I was struck by the aplomb last night, the reckless rhetoric by the man who set a match to a country, gloated in its burning, refuses to see the reality of the situation (tiny glints and only reluctantly), and is pouring more gasoline on the fire, or as my haiku above suggests (valid metaphors, Oh God please!), the place has burned down and NOW we send firetrucks? … but that isn’t it either. People are living there, trying their best to eat and sleep and wake up the next day… What right have we to cause all this horror? And now, are we just “patrolling the smoke?”

I pray Allah open the hearts of everyone involved, and bring justice to ruthlessness…

Which will come to pass, have no doubts…

Categories: Poems