Mission Accomplished (The Emperor Pt. 3)

The court jester saved the day
with his air force of purple piloting penguins.
He defended against the Invading Invaded
and proved the Democratic Peace Theory.
One way or another.
A Band-Aid on a brain tumor.
That miraculous swirl:
that day, the confusion,
when blind men hunt hawks
and the deaf danced on beat.
Never a celebration so yellow
had ever occurred in this kingdom.
The old King’s breasts perked
as she knighted him: Sir Fool.

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^ Second assignment for Creative Writing. ^

I like this poem, at least considering the assignment. We had to write a surrealist poem. We were told: don't write the way you've been taught to think. Defy convention. Write something that makes no sense while still having some kind of bond linking the lines.

So, this is the weirdest poem I've ever written, I think. That was the point of it.

Believe it or not, this poem is an allegory for the US in Iraq. It works; I promise it does. The only thing that doesn't really relate back to the real situation is that President Bush in not a woman and does not have perky breasts. But since it was a surrealist poem, I liked the idea of a woman king and the juxtaposition, in one line, of the words "King" (making you think male) and "breasts" (making you think female). I also like, in that same line, the "old King's breasts perked" because you think of perky breasts being the trait of young women.

Normally, I wouldn't explain a poem in depth because I want the reader to get whatever he/she wants from it, but since I've never written a poem like this before, I want to explain it mainly so I don't forget what it's about. Ignore the rest if you're disinterested.

This is what the poem means:

The jester is, essentially, General Petraeus and his air force of penguins is the military in general. Penguins don't fly, so the fact that these are flying penguins relates to the utter impossibility of a military engagement saving the US in this mess we've made, but in the poem, the jester is successful in his efforts.

The Invading Invaded is the Iraqi insurgency. The US claims to be the good guy even though the violence only increased when we got there. Now, they're fighting us and we try to paint ourselves as the victims. So, the military is defending the US against fighters whose fight escalated only when the US invaded them. (I mean, it was violent in Iraq before, but it got worse because of American military operations.) Fighting this war proves the Democratic Peace Theory one way or another by illustrating that this is a democracy fighting a theocracy...or at least something far from another stable democracy. It's meant to be cynical and a little ironic. US victory in Iraq (building a democracy there and lessening the violence) isn't really fixing the whole problem: it's just covering up and smothering underlying problems. Until the US is out of Iraq, the problems will remain and I'm not even so sure that's enough to stop it. Violence it the Middle East goes back hundred of years and it's a religious division that I'm not sure any outside force can fix...but that goes into my own philosophy which is unimportant here.

Moving on. The rest of the poem after the Band-Aid line refers to celebration at home. It was a miracle: a grand victory so wonderful it made the blind read and the deaf dance...and give an old lady perky breasts. Surrealist poetry uses weird images, so I wanted to describe the celebration as being yellow (meaning kind of bright and energetic, happy), rather than fun, exciting, etc. However, I chose yellow because it's also a word used to indicate cowardice. I wanted the double meaning. It isn't to imply that our soldiers aren't brave. It's more to imply that US citizens have been scared into this war. It's more of a reflection on the people than the administration.

And then the last two lines, I already kind of went over...except for the knighting of the jester. President Bush has a tendency to give people - almost degrading - nicknames. He likes calling people by names that indicate they are below him. So, the King knights the jester to reward his bravery, but still calls him a Fool so that everyone knows who's still in charge.

It was also a deliberate choice to use a royal allegory. Kings are thought of as being absolute rulers and imperialistic...and I think that describes the current administration pretty well. Making Petraeus a court jester wasn't to degrade him, really, but more to show an unlikely person going against what he would do in a normal situation. (He wrote a book about Iraq, but his recommendations have been going against what he wrote.) I've used similar allegories before in both my "Emperor" poems: using a fictional monarch as a symbol of the president. It's probably not a rare usage.


Okay, done with that. I have fifty pages of Walcott's "Omeros" to read by Tuesday and since I'm going to Boston this weekend for Brand New, I better get going on that.


"I belong in the service of the Queen. I belong anywhere but in between." Counting Crows Rain King