Best Games Ever

(suite)

I: The Grand Duchy of Douche Goes to the Olympics

The mandate went out, from the castle atop Mount Ordurous,

That the postage-stamp principality gather, from its foul citizenry,

The most diversified team of malodorous scumbaggers,

To represent the Grand Duchy of Douche

In the upcoming Beijing Olympics,

To flaunt its presence in the opening ceremony's Parade of Nations,

Regardless that it was too small to compete honorably in any events.

It was a matter of national pride,

Proclaimed by his Exaltedness on High himself — Haile Go-Lowly —

To which exulted and hallowed end the tiny cesspool of a state rallied,

Holding sector trials, block by block, gutter by gutter,

To determine the rankest and most scrofulous of ne'er-do-wells,

Who might make spectacles of themselves,

In the upcoming spectacle of spectacular spectacularities,

To stake their claim to inglorious fame, just by being there,

Just because being there would, indeed, say that Douche

Was represented in humanity's greatest coming together,

Its celebration of the potential for peaceful intercourse.

After considerable bickering, devious quarreling, murderous threats,

Fallings out and rapprochements trivial and earth-scourging,

A swarm of twelve incongruous and unqualified Douchebaggers

(Rufus "Hot" Diggity-Dog, Cletus Swockhammer,

Rapunzel Nutgatherer, Golondrina Nightingale, Essie Glockenspiel,

Kananga Rastafariña, Congoleeza Bonjobogusabando,

Venus-Serena Canocornocobba, Oskar D. Kettledrumrunner,

Hector V. Turnipseed, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada,

Chaim-Yitzi Chou-En-Mao Berlusconi Laughinggas Schmatte)

Was selected, from the most riffish of raffish rabble, to make the trip,

The dirtiest dozen of the Duchy of Douche ever assembled,

Who would dishonor the sovereign colors: black, brown, mustard.

It took months for the principality's tailors and seamstresses

To cobble together the ill-fitting ceremonial uniforms

And additional months to teach the twelve smelly representatives

How to get into and out of them, to highlight their slovenliness,

Ensuring that wardrobe malfunctions would be kept to a maximum,

That, at all costs and times, the indignity of Douche would be sullied.

When the royal spectaclers arrived in Beijing, they shit their pants.

Authorities, with despotic dispatch, totalitarianly seized their visas,

To the man-plague, the woman-phage, citing each as "scabrous,"

"Threats to freedom of assembly, speech, religion, conscience" —

All the rights naturally deserving of decent human beings,

Which China, throughout its history, has so oppressively revered —

Sent them packing, back to the Grand Duchy of Douche,

With their fit-to-be-tied tails stuck between their reeking cheeks.

Since that day, no Douchebagger has been permitted to buy Chinese.

II: In the Eyes of the Beholder

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it Superman?

Quite frankly, it's difficult,

If not downright impossible, to tell, in Beijing, today.

It depends on your point of view,

How you distinguish between fog and smog,

Define humidity and heat, carbon-dioxide particulates,

Whether you call thick, haze-polluted skies a rose

Or an exotic, tropical, toxic bird-of-paradise.

As Confucius say, "It all in eye of beholder,"

Which, in the final analysis, doesn't settle the case

As to why the lungs and throat, the eyes,

Burn like coal-fired furnaces powering plastics factories

(Just on the outskirts of the spit-shined Olympic venues)

Frantically pumping out toys, tease-combs, and fly swatters,

To meet the voracious needs of on-the-cheap nations.

Barmecidal feast? Double-edged sword? Pyrrhic victory?

Quite frankly, it shouldn't be too difficult to tell,

When only respirators attend the closing ceremonies.

III: The Olympic Spirit

I'd like to think that, by now, I've had it up to here,

With being told, by the worldwide media,

About the glaring disparity

Between China's deplorable human-rights record

And the stellar spectacle of its gleaming Olympic facade.

But in fact, this Beijing enterprise has done much

To make me burrow deep into my inner being,

In search of a way to mediate, reconcile my misgivings.

I confess, seeing such stunning civic progress

Gives me cause for doubt, apprehension,

Disillusion about the sincerity of my society's values,

Its sacrosanct cornerstone of democracy:

Respect for a person's unique entitlement to be free.

Oh, that we talk a good game is a given;

We're the first to boast, with jingoistic machismo, our virtues.

But God knows, even if we don't (because we don't want to),

That we're hard of listening,

Refuse to recognize that hypocrisy takes the gold, in America,

At all levels of politics, religion, commerce,

Individual morality and ethics,

And the motto on our not-so-almighty dollar bill

Doesn't read "In God We Trust"

But "Do What We Say, Not What We Do."

Certainly, everyone knows that repression of liberty

Stifles human enlightenment and the pursuit of happiness.

And yet, totalitarian regimes seem to keep society orderly,

Stymie people's predisposition toward gaming the system.

Maybe it's just my naiveté getting in the way.

How many displaced people, how much corruption, did it take,

For Beijing to light the torch of the Olympic spirit?

IV: Thin Air

Curious. Curiouser than curious, truth be told

Or withheld or suppressed, as the case may be.

I, for one American TV addict/newspaper junkie,

Can't quite tell what's happened,

Whether a massive international conspiracy is in progress

Or if I'm just missing something obvious —

One of those colossal don't-ask/don't-tell moments.

For weeks, months, years

Before the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games,

All that was documented on screens and pages, feared,

Was Beijing's foreboding smogscapes.

Commentators talked themselves blue in the face,

Gasping from the toxicity of the air, the dark skies,

The anxiety of athletes, worldwide, about participating.

Then there was the spewage by Chinese authorities,

Regarding how many factories were shut down,

How many cars had been removed from the streets,

How the smog was, officially, "fog."

But for the past ten days, I've heard not word one,

As though the pollution just disappeared into thin air...

Waiting for the last marathoner to cross the finish line.

V: Franklin Pettifogger in the Protest Zone

Decidedly, it's a stroke of blessed good fortune

That I was born in the United States of America,

Not the People's Republic of China,

Because, if you really must know,

I'm a fellow given to disputatiousness,

With an eye out for creeping injustice,

Which, from everything I came to discover,

During my two-week vacation at the Olympics,

Created some very testy entanglements for me,

When I applied, at the Beijing Public Security Bureau,

For a permit to avail myself of a "protest zone,"

Where I could assert my inalienable right to free speech.

I was supposed to gain access to a fenced-off area,

Where I'd be able to mount my soapbox

And fulminate with impunity.

But I was denied by the authorities, indeed detained,

Subjected to a grueling admininstrative water torture,

During my who-knows-how-long incarceration.

After the closing ceremonies, I was released,

Having been robbed of my original fire,

Officially convinced that what I'd intended to vent

Wasn't worth creating an international incident over.

All I really wanted to do was just protest

Not being able to find a joint that serves crab Rangoon.

VI: Ichthys

I can't tell you how utterly tired and sick I am

Of hearing Michael Phelps this and Michael Phelps that —

His inhuman physique, his bad teeth, his fast-food addiction,

His opportunities to reap millions of dollars

In endorsements for water wings, dental floss, Whoppers —

Right up there with Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning,

Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant, and Paris Hilton.

Actually, I think I can.

I should be able to put into objectified words

Just how deep my brain-fatigue really goes,

How appreciative I am of the Russian invasion of Georgia,

The suicide bombings in Algeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq,

Even the inane negativity of America's presidential campaign,

For offering such potential distractions from Phelpsmania.

And in doing so, with a reasonable degree of perspicacity,

I should be able to exorcise my abhorrence,

Purge, from memory, all that mesmerizingly maniacal hype,

Those eight coated-with-only-six-grams-of-gold medals,

The apotheosis of a twenty-three-year-old leviathan,

A gill-less, finless, scaleless swimming machine.

But I can't; I just damn-well can't,

Because every time I try, I feel like I'm being pulled under,

Held down, by a mighty hand — two mighty arms —

And two merely-thirty-inch-inseam legs,

Surmounted by a V-shaped torso with a condor's wingspan,

As I drown in a perverse baptism of my stifled spirit,

Being performed by Lord Michael,

The Speedo LZR Racer–clad ichthys of the new millennium.

VII: The Most Golds

How many times, in my dozen-presidents life,

Have I had such a perfect chance

To brandish a proletarian cliché like "I told you so"?

Not ever. But who couldn't see it coming,

And not just in the U.S.A., which knows, better than anyone,

How it feels to be owned by its richer uncle — Mao —

Beaten to a bloody, yellow pulp, in the capitalistic shell game,

Raked over the import/export–deficit coals,

Banished to the "MADE IN CHINA" gulag?

After all, when an economic superpower

Decides to put its collective mind and formidable treasury,

Systematically, to its national pride's grindstone,

Then winning fifty-one gold medals, to your rival's thirty-six,

Can be an "I told you so" moment, as the world has seen,

During these Games of the XXIX Olympiad, in Beijing?

Once, my country spent its unparalleled resources

To defend peace, freedom, democracy,

By building an atom bomb.

And we, the people of the Declaration of Independence,

The Constitution, the atom bomb,

Once again, at all costs, rose to the occasion —

Russia's unexpected Sputnik-fly in our cosmic ointment —

By landing an astronaut, on the moon,

Who would take "one giant leap for mankind."

Now, it's China's turn to take its next small step for man.

Will it be in its gold-medal dreams of worldwide hegemony,

Or might it be closer to home — freeing its people?

08/25/08 - (2)