On Prosecuting Böhmermann’s Foul Mouth
by Uwe Carl Diebes

Before the Turkish flag and portrait of grim Erdogan,
he read his rude, satiric po’m—feisty Jan Böhmermann;
and now he could be prosecuted for insulting him,
a foreign head of state who is himself both crude and dim.
He said that Erdogan screwed goats, suppressed minorities,
kicked Kurds, beat girls, and as well, watched child pornography.
He’s gone too far insulting Turkey’s bossy autocrat,
perhaps because he hit the nail far too close at that.
“To learn who rules above you, find whom you can’t satirize,”
Voltaire, I swear, the numbers swell whom we can’t criticize.

Bruce Dale Wise is a poet and essayist who writes under various charichords (anagrammatic heteronyms). The creator of new poetic forms, his publication credits include magazines and ezines under his own name and various pseudonyms. Some include The American Aesthetic, Ithacalit, Red Fez, The Kitchen Poet, Pacific Literary Review, Straight Forward, Everett, Oddball Magazine, The Curious Record, Elsewhere Magazine, Aji Magazine, Tipton Poetry Journal, Poetry Pacific, Rattle and Trinacria.