HA HOO HA

'' YOU think I'm afraid of a few rioting hippies? Don't make me laugh, 'ha hoo,' or whatever a laugh sounds like,'' Richard Nixon quips, looking out of the window of the Oval Office.

This fictional Nixon appeared recently in an animated show; obviously the writers didn't intend for the former US President's emotional intelligence to be remembered fondly.

A rough dig on someone who considered himself a poet.

''The language of politics is poetry,'' the real Nixon once said, ''not prose.'' ''Jackson is poetry, Cuomo is poetry, Dukakis is a word processor.''

As dull as a word processor,'' Nixon had called Dukakis. Of course, Nixon could have done with some less poetry and more word processing by the end of his term in office.

Dukakis served two successful terms as governor of Massachusetts, while Nixon was relegate to the dark ''gates'' of history, a tarnished legacy. It was Dukkakis who had the last laugh then, ''ha hoo ha''.

But Nixon was on to something with the poetry bit. Surely, he didn't make it to the Presidency based on his understanding of the mechanics of human joy expressed through laughter, or the lack thereof. He was indeed a poet. And spoke of a different kind of poet, the political poet.

Political Poetry is not the beautiful arrangement of words to inspire the listener, instead it oozes with gluttonous use of plausible deniability, as it becomes to each reader what the reader wants to read.

Political Poetry is open to interpretation, you don't really make claims, you don't disclaim anything either, you just whisper, loud enough for it to exist, but silent enough for you to deny having whispered the same, should the need arise.

It is art in its own, one of tight-roping public opinion, not offending people in a place where offence is perhaps easiest taken.

Such poetry should serve for your  day-to-day political needs. From speeches, to resolutions, to meetings to statements. Everything has to be open-endedly mysteriously, relatably poetic.

Speaking of politics, politics in Pakistan isn't prose. It is not clearly defined narratives based-on discernable facts. It's a poetry. Politics here is metaphorical, based on the philosophical, even hypothetical, but never the actual.

The Honor and Serving of the latest writings on Politics , continues. The World Students Society thanks the author,  Lawyer Shahzaib Khan