And now another gem from TMV’s favorite artist of verse, Michael Silverstein, aka Wall Street Poet:
August in Baghdad
By Michael Silverstein
August in Baghdad, the air’s like an oven,
The parliament’s shut down, it’s too hot to govern;
The people who claim to be running this nation,
Have packed up their bags and gone off on vacation.
They haven’t, of course, left the place unattended,
It wouldn’t be right to leave it undefended;
American troops will keep things all together,
They’re good at hard fighting in all sorts of weather.
September again, parliament will debate,
Will argue and backbite (though not legislate);
In Bushworld they’ll say, none of this should dismay us,
Our surge is a winner, you tell ’em Patraeus.
©2007 Michael Silverstein
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.