Dear Norm,
It’s not really my place
to say, but I’m pretty sure that
the President does not need to be more facile,
like he said.
He does not need to be more facile.
He seems quite facile enough, to me.
And, neither do we, the people,
we, the commuters, we, the consumers,
we, the voters, the viewers,
we the suspiciously homogenized undecided target demographic,
drawn from a representative
sample of Americans in the great state
of Missour-uh. We do not need to be more facile.
We’ve been facile enough.
Insouciance? His specious, superficial simplicities
can fill all your pulp and hardwood needs:
The facile fact checkers on the networks have his itemized
deductions from 2001 at hand but lack a dictionary.
That was not a lie; just another palpable absurdity.
He must have meant something meaningful,
not something scary.
Norm, nobody is talking about the President’s facile claim
that unlike the (blood-sucking trial attorney) senators,
he understands these people who
occupy the principle offices of
other sovereigns among the community of nations –
the kind of nations that have
– health care,
– technological infrastructure,
– t.v. studios;
nations that sign international treaties honoring,
and defining as a crime against peace
aggression against the sovereignty of nations.
He understands these people?
And he does not think he’s been facile enough, yet!
He, who does not understand
the great American businesses of baseball and oil,
who does not understand his native language.
What did the speechwriter intend him to say,
there, in that deflection, I ask myself under the lights.
France, Norm.
France and Germany, the Dutch, Anglo-phones,
Spaniards, Poles, Kurds, the Slavs and the Emirs!
Russia, Norm,
China, Tehran, P’yongyang, Palestine. Africa.
These people, he understands, Norm: Them,
their leaders, their ambassadors
and the Secretary General of the United Nations
– who, incidentally, called his war a crime against peace –
and all the Asians and South Americans, and whoever else.
His understanding,
his unprecedented coalition,
his record,
and he wants to be more facile!
And we are silent about it, Norm. We are silent
because we do not know the rules of our own language
any more. We do not understand these people
who have been our friends,
our neighbors and compatriots, to whom
we might talk if they were not plotting
to blow up our schools
or to denounce us for some similar atrocity.
A facile understanding
of sovereigns and sovereignty,
of traditions and norms, Norm,
of leading a state among states,
and no great shakes at planning and teamwork.
I don’t think he talks to God, but I’ll grant
his vision is one of burning, Bush.
Apprehensively, your
Paranoid And Too Readily Identified On The Internet Chum,
Anonymous Suspicious Subject Having Only Loyal Emotions