This is based off the unrhymed couplets and the images in the piece "The Stalin Epigram" by Osip Mandelstam. I borrowed a couple of things, shifting them slightly.
My body no longer feels the air around it.
After two minutes under water, I can't breathe.
But whenever I listen to those men in suits,
someone shifts talk back to that Islamic militant,
and the ten thick worms his fingers,
his speech like measures of lies,
the huge, white, looping mound on his head,
the graying of his beard.
Covered with the inconsistencies of homeland media,
his people ride the idea of amusement parks and the way of Allah.
Someone nods, another sniffs, one holds back a chuckle.
He waves his hand and someone else goes boom.
His decrees roll like metered poetry,
he writes them all for the waiting fellows back home.
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