By Byron Gordon,
News Lampoon poet
Canto the Fourth
1
Tar balls litter the
Gulf’s white sandy beaches,
And sweet oil crude
blows from porpoises holes,
And pelicans languish
along the reaches
From Florida to Texas
playing their roles
Of media darlings,
something to teach us,
All suffering, dying,
and meanwhile polls
Are taken: “Do you love
the President?”
A few mark “Yes”—but no
Gulf resident.
2
And Business, lawyers,
and policy-makers
With money, subterfuge,
and knowing lies
Still call the shots
‘cause they’re “movers & shakers”
While newly-drowned
fishes covered with flies
Pollute the shores until
new-hired rakers
Collect them, amazed;
unblinking round eyes,
Watching, accusing,
evermore will haunt
Their dreams, and gulls
they cry, forlornly taunt
3
These toiling workers
sifting sand; and sun
And media shine their
lights on disaster
Where fishermen apply
themselves as one,
As always have applied,
now not as casters
But supplicants
for funds, their lives undone,
Collaterally-damaged,
paymaster-
Paid dependents, by
nature independent,
Relying on bureaucrat
and defendant.
4
For ninety days our
mother Earth did bleed
While Government
panicked, and Big Oil
Dissimulated, saying
there’s no need
To worry, and all but
lost in the royal
Shuffle, eleven dead
victims of greed
Who gave their lives,
gave up the earthly coil
For money-grubbers who
care not a wit
About loss of life, no
sir, not a bit.
5
Then one came forth,
unadvisedly stated
He wanted his
life back, and next his boss
Extolled “small people”
(that’s how we are rated);
The suff’ring shrimpers,
riggers, broke and cross,
Abhorred the
condescension unabated,
Denounced BP and
Government, the gross
Abuse of power, Public
Trust, and Nature,
The perceptions veiled
in caricature.
6
Big Oil is vilified, and
rightly so,
By Gulf shore residents
whose livelihoods
Have vanished overnight,
but we should know
That oily plume spewing
ill-gotten goods
Was sanctioned first by
Government though
You’d never know it from
the words, the floods
Of verbiage cascading
down upon
Our heads from high, the
lies advanced, the con,
7
Administered in daily
doses for
“The greatest good” of
people too inept
To know what’s best
themselves, and what is more
Or less the truth, and
what is not, is kept
From us; for
consolidation of power,
The quid pro quo,
rules in corridors swept
With lust for dominance
o’er peoples, nations,
The goal of régimes and
corporations.
We Love You Mister President! Canto the First
Canto the Second
Canto the Third
The
News Lampoon--Twisted News, Humor & Satire