The Broken Phone

It’s a broken telephone and no one notices it,

the Orange Head holds court with ghosts and gilded mirrors,

whilst the Persian squishes the static out of his misguided calls;

to whom is the senile Tom speaking?

Middlemen, bribe-men, perhaps they all scammed him;

the Orange Head doesn’t know this is a holy race

between gods and angels, and he’s merely a flickering demon,

dispatching emissaries to barter in the currency of illusions.

The phone is broken, but his eyes are napping;

words are hitting the newspapers to plunge oil prices

So the deep whale-pockets are filled,

Yet, the sky rains fire upon the innocent, the “collateral” mortals,

And the planet shudders toward a systemic blackout.

Whose is to blame? The Orange Head points the finger to the Strait of Hormuz,

He just learned that name as he heard the Babylonian’s tale,

A thousand years of existence,

the Persian fought against the Roman, the Ottoman, the British, the Soviets;

They all were expelled from the Alborz and Zagros, and Dasht-e Lut and Dash-e Kavir;

the Orange Head is almost eighty and in decay…

This is their land, their fortress.

So tell us again, Orange Head: Who exactly is on the other end of that line?

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