Interview with the Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud is on fire tonight
spinning like the monkey god
won't stop dancing for long enough
for you to get near
pin him up against the wall
go through his pockets

look for lies, sinister things
trouble bedded deep
rape-dreams of bonneted church-wives
from Middle England
in his blackbeard heart

all his answers impossible

wily and glitter-eyed, laughing
poison phials, curved daggers
secreted in his djinn-jumping
his cackling desert gimmicks

are your American bombs not dangerous?
he's flipping like dust devils
are your bombs full of flowers?
full of perfumes?

with all his answers-impossible
doesn't understand here
Mr Snowy don't approve
of grinning tooth-baring
weaving whirling whistling wild
hokey-faced afreet monkeys
want to have your wife and daughter

in reefer-mad Persian hareems
reeling perfumed with eunuch bombs
in suits teetering upright


like King Louie on hind legs
in the blind dance of all fire:
pumping his Cheshire-cat beard
up the tube

(for whose side unlaid?
—his Ground Zero flowers vanish
like lost holocausts
from the pages of time)