If Women Get the Vote

Here's a poem for Poetry Friday on Thursday. I'm heading to Maine today for a wedding.

A poet friend of mine, who chooses to remain anonymous, sent me the following “ironic” poem—and asked if I’d consider posting it at Political Verses.


If Women Get the Vote

19th Amendment
Ratified August 18, 1920

There’s no use to pretend,
The world’s about to end,
If women get the vote.

The Catholics'll get in,
The blacks and Jews'll win,
If women get the vote.

Who wants to take the chance
That they'll be wearing pants,
If women get the vote?

Egads, I do believe
They might just up and leave,
If women get the vote.

And once their muscle’s flexed,
What horrors happen next,
If women get the vote?

Now just imagine, friend,
The message this will send.
There’s no use to pretend,
We know the world will end,
If women get the vote.

Kelly Herold is doing the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Crossover.

The Vietcong Tunnels: A Poem by J. Patrick Lewis

Well...I guess you could say that May was vacation month at Political Verses. I didn't post one rhyming rant. I have a poem for you today thanks to the generosity of poet J. Patrick Lewis.


The Vietcong Tunnels
by J. Patrick Lewis

Some were narrow, some were deep,
But all of them snick-snaked along
Into your agitated sleep:
The tunnels of the Vietcong.

And they were dug to fight the war
Americans had thought was right.
The staunch belief they held before
They learned where they were sent to fight:

A jungle that defied all maps.
The shambles of liana vines
Disguised a trip of booby traps
And other anti-human mines.

And there were those GIs who crawled
Inside the holes like stealthy cats,
Individuals who were called
Many things and tunnel rats.

What, you might ask, did GIs do
Inside the burrow of the foe?
Well, this was war, that much is true,
But it was many years ago.

We quit the war and stopped the bomb,
Still confounding right and wrong.
Still spidered under Vietnam?
The tunnels of the Vietcong.

Extended Engagement: A Poem by J. Patrick Lewis

Here's a poem by J. Patrick Lewis for the final day of National Poetry Month!

Extended Engagement

We dated during Harry Truman’s reign,

Through Ike, Dick, Jimmy, Ronnie, Bill and Bush—

And we got married yesterday! My cane

Lovingly gave her wheelchair a push.

Here are links to other poems by J. Patrick Lewis that I posted previously at Political Verses:

• Henry K., Man of Peace: A Poem by J. Patrick Lewis
• Poem at the End of the Twentieth Century by J. Patrick Lewis
• A Poem about George Stephanopoulos by J. Patrick Lewis
• This Be the Verse: It Doesn't Matter What You Do

I send my thanks and heartfelt appreciation to Pat Lewis for granting me permission to post his poems here at my blog.

Bye-bye, Bybee

Jay Bybee: The Man Behind Waterboarding (By Randy James—Time, April 28, 2009)

Jay Bybee has been called the "forgotten man" in the mounting furor over the CIA's harsh interrogation of imprisoned terror suspects — but he's quickly assuming a leading role. Though the mild-mannered lawyer has attracted little public attention, as a top Justice Department official he approved an array of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" against alleged al-Qaeda members that many observers call torture. They include forcing prisoners to stay awake for a week or more, waterboarding them and trapping them with an insect to exploit their fear of bugs.


Bye-bye, Bybee

Bye-bye, Bybee—
You so-and so—
It’s time you were benched.
It’s time to go.

Return your robe—
And your gavel, too!
Judgment day is here
For you and Yoo.

You and Yoo,
The infamous two
From the OLC—
The lawyers who

Used tortured logic
And legalese
To circumvent laws…
Two corroborees

Who defined techniques
For interrogation
(Enhanced AND sadistic)
With specification.

You think you did it
For the good of our nation?
You think there truly
Is justification

For waterboarding…
Other tortures as well?
YOU’RE a rotten thing in Denmark
And you’re starting to smell!


FYI
Bybee’s ‘remoteness from the actual torturers’ increases his ‘degree of responsibility.’ (Think Progress—4/27/09)

Jon Eisenberg, one of the lawyers who is representing the plaintiffs in a case challenging Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, writes in the Philadephia Inquirer today that Jay Bybee’s “remoteness from the actual torturers increases his degree of responsibility”:

Bybee did not write the torture memo he signed; it was written by John Yoo, then at the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel and currently a law school professor who writes a monthly column for The Inquirer. Bybee just signed off on the memo, two desks removed from the torture chamber. Did he even read it? He must have. Did he think much about it? How could he have, and then signed such an abhorrent thing? This is evil thoughtlessness. […]


Bybee defends his torture memos as ‘legally correct’ and ‘a good-faith analysis of the law.’ (Think Progress—4/29/09)

Judge Jay Bybee finally "broke his silence" and talked to the New York Times about his legal memos which authorized torture. This past weekend, the Washington Post quoted anonymous friends of Bybee claiming that Bybee was apologetic for authoring the memos. Speaking for himself, Bybee said that's not the case:

[H]e said: “The central question for lawyers was a narrow one; locate, under the statutory definition, the thin line between harsh treatment of a high-ranking Al Qaeda terrorist that is not torture and harsh treatment that is. I believed at the time, and continue

The Winner This Week is...

Mary Lee Hahn of A Year of Reading is the lucky winner of Once Upon a Tomb: Gravely Humorous Verses, which was written by J. Patrick Lewis and illustrated by Simon Bartram. If you haven’t read this poetry book yet, Mary Lee, you’re in for a treat—and lots of chuckles!

Here is the schedule for the upcoming drawings at Wild Rose Reader and Political Verses.

May 1st—for comments left on posts dated April 26-30

The winner of the drawing that will take place on May 1st will receive a copy of The Best of Ogden Nash.

Find out who won copies of Birds on a Wire and What Can you Do with an Old Red Shoe? over at Wild Rose Reader.

Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Heaven's Door: John Yoo at the Pearly Gates

FYI

Yoo Torture Memo Says Fourth Amendment Doesn't Apply in War on Terror (Wired)
John Yoo is sorry for nothing (Salon.com)

Knock Knock Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door: John Yoo at the Pearly Gates

Knock Knock!
Who’s there?
Halloo! It’s Yoo!
Yoo Who?
John Yoo. That’s who.
The Yoo who wrote the torture memo?
THAT Yoo!
Yes, it’s THAT Yoo. That’s true.
You, Yoo, cannot come in. Shoo, Yoo,
Head to hell where you’ll get your due!

Knock Knock!
Who’s there?
Boohoo! Boohoo!
I beg your pardon. Boo…Who?
It’s Yoo—not Boo! Sorry…I was feeling blue.
Now open the gate and let me through!
As I recall, I bid YOU adieu.
Now go to hell like I told you to.

Knock Knock!
Who’s there?
It’s me. It’s Yoo.
Let me in or I’ll make a great big hullabaloo!
Pooh, Yoo, you’ve done some things that you should rue.
Now it’s time to sit and stew.
The devil said you’re overdue!
Let me in. I’m begging you!
Sorry, Yoo—no can do.
It’s time for you to barbecue
Down with the fire and brimstone crew.
Adieu. Toodle-oo. Don’t come back. SCREW, Yoo!


Earlier This Week at Political Verses
The Cows Caused It: A Poem about Global Warming
This Be the Verse: It Doesn't Matter What You Do (A Poem by J. Patrick Lewis)

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• My post at Wild Rose Reader, Poetry Friday: Animal Haiku, includes reviews of four books of haiku about animals.
• At Blue Rose Girls today: Opposite Poems--Part 2
• The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Under the Covers this week.

This Be the Verse: It Doesn't Matter What You Do

I have two poems for you today--one by Philip Larkin and one by J. Patrick Lewis

This Be the Verse
by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

You can read the rest of Larkin’s poem here.

About Philip Larkin

• You can read out about poet Philip Larkin and find links to some of his poems here.
• Not just about your mum and dad (An article about Philip Larkin by Joshua Weiner)
  
  

  J. Patrick Lewis

Here is a poem by J. Patrick Lewis—written in the style of This Be the Verse:

It Doesn’t Matter What You Do
After Philip Larkin

by J. Patrick Lewis

You fuck them up, your girl and boy.
It doesn’t matter what you do.
The latest theories you employ
Will make them flaming assholes, too.

And then, to maximize despair,
Greedy daughters and selfish sons
Repay your fine parental care
By breeding Young Republicans.