“Our Disinformation campaign
Will be complete when Everything
The American public believes is False.”²
We learn more about the world by lying on the
Couch drinking gin out of the bottle—
Than by watching the News.³
Newspapers report doings
In lives that we do not share—⁴
Markets define the News and not
The experience of the besieged.⁵
Thousands of Wounds
Make only one newspaper article.⁶
A Weary man enters the broadcasting stations
Seeking a cheering item of News—and exits Slain—⁷
We don’t watch news anymore—
Translation: we are worried
Our people will be on it—⁸
Media always report—but the full Truth is: …⁹
It is hard to get the News from Poems—yet men
Die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.¹⁰
¹ Naomi Shihab Nye, Blood
² William Casey (CIA director)
³ Garrison Keillor
⁴ Richard Wright, Black Boy
⁵ Carolyn Forché, Introduction to Against Forgetting
⁶ Guillaume Apollinaire tr. Anne Greet, Shadow
⁷ Khalid Abu Khalid tr. Jayyusi & Nye, Prayer to the Tremor
⁸ George Abraham, Inheritance: a Translation
⁹ Eman Al-astal, Half Truths
¹⁰ William Carlos Williams, Of Asphodel, That Greeny Flower