Sarah Palin's Swan/Duck/Goose Song

The waterfowl on Lake Lucille could be heard commenting in the background as Sarah Palin informed the media she would be stepping down as governor of Alaska.


Sarah Palin Resigns



Sarah Palin's Swan/Duck/Goose Song
by Elaine Magliaro

Hithery dithery dock,
I’m list’ning to Sarah P. talk.
Her thinking is muddled.
The geese are befuddled.
They’ve started to gather and squawk.

Hithering withering wits,
She’s sending the geese into fits.
They’re honkin’ and flappin’.
She’s breathless and yappin’.
They think that the gov is a ditz.

Hithery plithery pluck,
The geese are all running amuck
As the gov blathers on.
Ah, but soon she’ll be gone.
They’re so glad she won’t be a lame duck!


A Little Extra
From Jonathan Turley’s Blog--Palinotology: Sarah Palin States That, If President, She Would Be Protected By The “Department of Law”

The Warrior: A Mother's Story of a Son at War by Frances Richey

Here is an excerpt from Frances Richey’s website about her book:
When Frances Richey's son, Ben, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Green Beret, went on the first of his two deployments to Iraq, Richey began to write. The Warrior is her urgent and intensely personal exploration of what a mother is feeling as her only son goes off to war, as she says good-bye to him, misses him, prays for him, and waits for him to come home.

At the heart of this memoir in verse lies a mother's love for her son-a son from whom she feels distant both literally and metaphorically, for she is opposed to the war but nevertheless realizes that she needs to understand and support the choices he has made.

From KILL SCHOOL

That was the summer he rappelled

down mountains on rope

that from a distance looked thin

as the dragline of a spider,

barely visible, the tension

he descended

into the made-up

state of Pineland

with soldiers from his class.

They started with a rabbit,

and since my son was the only one

who’d never hunted,

he went first. He described it:

moonlight, the softness

of fur, another pulse

against his chest.

You can read the rest of the poem here.



From LETTERS

-1

Before he left for combat,

he took care of everything:

someone to plow the driveway,

cut the grass.

And the letter he wrote me,

just in case, sealed

somewhere, in a drawer;

can’t be opened,

must be opened

if he doesn’t return.

You can read the rest of the poem here.

Inventory
This is a poem Frances Richey wrote after she visited with her son when he was preparing to deploy to Iraq in the fall of 2004.

To My Son in Iraq

Frances Richey

********************

At Wild Rose Reader, I have an original “tortoise” acrostic and reviews of two pictures books with fables written in verse.

At Blue Rose Girls, I have a poem by Jack Spicer entitled Psychoanalysis: An Elegy.

Tabatha A. Yeats has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week.

Poetry from Iran

I have no snarky verses for you today. Instead...here is some poetry from Iran.


From NPR

Poetry from Iran, One Tweet at a Time

Iran’s National Poet Speaks Out



More Iranian/Persian Poetry

Rumi’s Poetry

Iranian Women Poets

Midnight Approaches (A Brief History of Persian Poetry)

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