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Newspoetry 1998: The Ventriloquist's Administration

by Willy G and Paul K

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1.
1979: the Nicaraguan Revolution Sandanistas drew up a beautiful new constitution It would have been the beginning of a peaceful era cause They were free from business interests in US America So an army called the contras for more than eight years Terrorized Nicaraguans with violence and fears And this piece of a story is just a tiny sample Of how the U.S. will kill the threat of any good example Let's remember an important part of this: The contras weren't Nicaraguan, they were an artifice Napalm defoliation, peasant relocation U.S. fund allocation from negotiation With Iranian leaders bent on militarization Exterminations assassinations Interrogations: The ventriloquist's administration The celebrated Mr. Kite, Paul is on the bass, he's Here to help me tell you bout a spook named William Casey's A businessman who made a million on the stock exchange He helped to finance and manage Ronald Reagan's campaign And this to ensure Reagan's inauguration Which in turn ensured Casey's own nomination As George Bush's successor as CIA director And into this haunted white house came this investor spectre The U.S. had had an ally in the Shah of Iran But Khomeini threw him out and to America he ran The Ayatollah wanted the Shah's head on a plate And so he seized hostages from the United States Check out the history because you're gonna be amazed They arranged to have the hostages' release... delayed. Until Reagan's inauguration day And underneath President Jimmy Carter's eyes They thus engineered the October surprise Much later Iran could not resist the seduction Of another fast buck from a U.S. abduction They started seizing Americans from Lebanon And writing ransom notes straight to the Pentagon For five missile shipments they sent one hostage back Hold your breath: William Buckley was tortured to death But I'm ahead of myself that interrogation Happens later on in the ventriloquist's administration New President Reagan, ventriloquist's dummy Handed out cigars rolled in treasury money On the puppeteer's knee he mouthed his stated goal Was to keep the contras alive in body and soul "The moral equivalent of our founding fathers" The puppet aptly dubbed the nicaraguan slaughterers And tossed back a trilliondollar jellybean, red 200 thousand Central Americans dead George Bush earned a flying cross in world war 2 Got a degree in economics from yale too He made an ol' fortune and entered politics A texas congressman in 1966 As CIA director he learned how to cover it Up: he became an architect of secret government Later he would wave a bag of crack on TV Declaring war on the drugs he imported as VP We're Willy G and Paul K we're rapping and we're regal And the rest of what happened was completely illegal Because congress passed the Boland amendment Outlawing aid to the contras, they wanted 'em to end it I guess congress didn't find mining harbors covert enough. Or didn't want to pay for people getting hurt. And they didn't okay exporting missiles to Iran For hostages. They weren't stupid, man. From now on the ventriloquist never gave the puppet Any lines to say for fear that he would flub it The dummy sat on his knee on T.V.with silent lip The ventriloquist shredded every punchline and script He obstructed justice by destroying all the evidence, he Never told the dummy, who occupied the presidency "I would never have approved that if you'd asked me" Quoth the puppeteer: "that's deniability." MC Willy G Ph.D. holding forth Rappin' bout my homeboy Oliver North He maybe did it out of love for the US of A But he tucked away twenty K along the way And maybe he wanted the world to be fairer But the war of the contras was a dirty war of terror And maybe he thought that that was flour in that plane But his secretary: she was whacked on cocaine Fawn Hall, November 21st, ë86 Shredded a pile of jokes a foot and a half thick The shredder jammed, split its seams, she began eating While reading while eating while eating while reading She dreamt of Sumatra and dating a contra Wished she were an actress recited a mantra She couldn't get reliable blow in D.C. So last I heard she got a job with network T.V. Which brings us to the story of Willy the Kid The Arkansas governor who hid the things that he did A cowboy who made a sweet real estate deal And took from the taxpayers all he could steal And an Arkansas airfield north of Mena What this means is obscene I'm getting sick I'm turning green That Clinton was elected was suspicious enough Because nobody thought he was presidential stuff So arms were sold to Iran, lots of money was made For contras to keep Nicaraguans afraid With assassination manuals and CIA-trained killers And Nazi torture methods for the contra guerrillas Lots of people got rich lots of people lied Americans gave speeches, Nicaraguans died And load after load of South American cocaine Flew into Arkansas in a CIA plane All that cocaine was converted to crack And sold to crips and bloods in parts of L.A. that were black And now we have an epidemic and the war on drugs When in fact that crack was packed in planes by government thugs And the so-called war on drugs is a war on civilians To pack us into prisons and keep them making millions Because the fewer poor people there are on the street The sweeter the street for the economic elite We're Willy G and Paul K we're white disgusted and broke We can't handle this scandal, it's like a big bad joke We're astute, I'm wearing a suit, Paul's cute Like the Christic Institute we can't afford a lawsuit We're fresh like coffee, welcome like a doormat And to this end append in proper MLA format No works cited page ëcause we're too enraged We're not polka Christian metal punk or new age Except to thank Barbara Trent for some films that we went To. And Gary Webb, whom you can read on the web or CD-ROM or visit but not at sjmercury.com And read Terry Reed, he's alarming indeed I got the deffest rhymes I read the New York Times Paul's reads the Nation and has funky syncopation We're educated, opinionated, sick of being Watergated If you want to start writing news that you like: Get on the mike.

about

The story was old but still breaking; the San Jose Mercury News had not yet retracted Gary Webb's Dark Alliance. Associated Poets seek to unravel the Iran-Contra and teach it using mnemonic devices such as extended metaphor and beats.

credits

released September 6, 2019

Vocals, words, samples: William Gillespie
Guitar, bass, drums, background vocals, final mixing and mastering: Paul Kotheimer

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Spineless Books Urbana, Illinois

Founded 20-02-2002, Spineless Books is an independent literary publishing house dedicated to the production and distribution of innovative literature, with an emphasis on collaborative writing, formal experimentation, and utopian thought.

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