Guantanamo
Guantanamo, Guantanamo,
It sounds like some old cowboy show,
Where Mexicans with sexless grins
Bait deputies with double chins,
Where horses lie in greasy straw
And drunken gunmen tread the floor,
Where lawless posses steal and rob
Together with the lynching mob.
This simile’s not water-tight,
But still, more than three-quarters right.
It’s true that in those western serials,
While justice wasn’t too material,
The bad were captured, or shot dead.
The innocent were not force-fed.
The rustlers in their spurless boots
Weren’t held ten years in orange suits,
And though conditions might be sordid,
Prisoners were not water-boarded.
The whiskied judge’s words were slurred,
But cases were in time all heard.
Perhaps it’s time that B. Obama
Looked back at ’50s TV drama.
Read a BBC new story here
Click here to buy Bill’s poetry collection Ringers
