Dear President Biden,
Your non-gaffe perfectly matches the requirements for the first two lines of a haiku:
“For God’s sake, this man
cannot remain in power.”
Right? Those 9 words are comprised of 12 syllables that break at just the right spot to lend more heft to the phrase “this man” – yes, this one right here is the one that cannot remain in power. There are absolutely other “this man” examples that would be fine stand in’s for Putin, but still, it works really, really well.
For the first two lines….
But what to do with the third line? It can only be another 5 syllables and it’s hard to know what direction to take things. Most everything that seems worth saying doesn’t seem say-able in 5 syllables.
I’ve pondered this for the better part of a full day (it now being March 30th) and so far all that I’ve come up with are the following two options:
Except that he can.
Or
But how will this end?
Neither is all that satisfactory from a standard Disney-America standpoint. Neither portends a happy ending and they both leave things dangling and uncertain in a pretty menacing way.
But they’re both real, aren’t they?
Putin really can – and is likely to – remain in power for the foreseeable future and if this bears out, his grip on that power is likely to be even more desperate and horrifying than ever.
And it’s also real that you can very much believe that Putin should not, cannot remain in power, and as we now know, you can actually say this out loud. But to what end – how will this end for you, for us, for the world? Your aids can back-pedal on the statement all they want, but it’s still now been said out loud – by you, in public – so what now?
I guess we’ll see.
May we all be safe.
May we all be happy and content.
May we all be healthy and strong.
May all of our lives unfold and intersect honorably, humbly, peaceably, and sustainably.
Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson
p.s., just in case you want to see each possible complete haiku, here you go:
“For God’s sake, this man
cannot remain in power.”
Except that he can.
“For God’s sake, this man
cannot remain in power.”
But how will this end?
“For God’s sake, this man
cannot remain in power.”
I guess we’ll see.
The Biden Letters 