A DIRTY STORY

Amidst mushroom cloud of radioactive
national embarrassment,
Amidst stark naked fact of president
utterly beyond shame,
   a Mr. Emperor truly without
clothes
amidst fetid, pornographic fog of
Kenneth Starr's mind,

I return to September 11,1973,
 very first week at L-S ever,
Rm. 412, when I watched the
sixties end in smoke over Moncada Palace,
Santiago, Chile,
  the final curtain dropped on
utopian dreams, as Salvador
 Allende, the companero
President, the socialist, the freely-elected
  leader,
      defended democracy
    against the jets of the Chilean
air force. On my lampshade at home,
a yellowing photo: "Allende's last moments,"
  he, looking up, helmet on, gun in hand, moving forward
             ...moments later, dead in the rubble, with
     3,000 Chileans to follow, tortured,
           "disappeared," murdered.

In this weekend's Times,
    a  whole section beyond the "Full
          Text of the Independent Prosecutor's Report,"
   in a distant galaxy beyond the black hole
of President Clinton's zipper, and light years
before the Monica asteroid was born,
   a lonely report, "The CIA Took Aim...,"
       confirming finally what we always knew,
  that we were behind it, that we paid for it,
$10 million bucks worth, and that we couldn't have
been happier.

Oh, Kenneth Starr,
el commandante
  of our one nation under God
        sex police,
furiously dedicated chronicler
of bathroom fumblings and
       and all petting and necking
felonies,

 on this day,
spare a thought

   for Salvador Allende,

from whom

 no forgiveness has

been asked,

 and no apologies

       given,

                      still.


September 14, 1998
 
 

 
 
All written material © Bill Schechter, 2016
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