Friday, June 23, 2006

The Love Song of G. Dubya Bushwack

In honor of Dubya's visit to the Mideast, I will resurrect a pastiche I wrote four long years ago.


Love Song of G. Dubya Bushwack

(with apologies to T.S. Eliot, who nonetheless had a sense of humor)

Let us go then, USA,
While the nation’s fed up against this guy
And like a patient etherized on CNN cable
Let us go, through Bagdad’s half-deserted streets
Their muddling retreats
And restless blight of greedy oil cartels
And vapor masks and mortar shells:
Ambassadors follow with a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us pay Iraq a visit.


In the room Dick Cheney comes and goes,
Plotting Saddam’s overthrow.


The pettifog who silks his back with undeserving gains,
The callow dog who’s spying at your window panes
Sticked his nose into the corners of all your believings
Lingered by the fools who chat on trains
Let fall upon his back the chump who falls for brokerage
Schemes in the office, made a sudden leap
And seeing that he’d informed on all his friends to Ridge
Curled back under his rock, and fell asleep.


And indeed there will be time
For the callow dog who slides along the street
Grubbing for tattle tales through your window panes
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to fool the faces that we beat
There will be time to murder and create
Excuses for all the works of covert hands
That lift and drop the onus on our plate
Time to press the U.N., and time for me
To steamroll past a hundred indecisions
Ignore a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of Ar Ramadi.


In the room Dick Cheney comes and goes,
Plotting Saddam’s overthrow.


And indeed there will be time
To wonder “Do I dare?” and “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and consult with Blair
With Ariel Sharon still in my hair
(They will say, “How his reasoning‘s growing thin!”)
My flack, dear Fletcher, will take it firmly on the chin,
And Rumsfeld, rich and modest, but asserting that we’ll win --
(They will say: "But what happened to ol’ Bin?")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a Minuteman will reverse.


For I have known the real players, known them all:
Have wooed them evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out truth with coffee spoons;
I know how to win the whole Congressional
Gang with the profits from an oil boom.
So how should I presume?


And I have known the liberals already, known them all--
The critics fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spin out my version of my crazy ways?
And how should I presume?


And I have bought the arms already, bought them all--
Arms that are massive, launching in midair
(That made my cronies billionaires!)
Is it Hussein’s sheer excess
That makes me so digress?
Arms that seek out depots or on civilians fall.
So should I then presume?
And how should I begin?


Shall I say, I have sent my spies through narrow streets
They watched the smoke that rises from the plants
Of devious mobile fact’ries leaving Bagdad in fleets? ...


I should have made a loophole clause for
Scuttling Resolution 1441 with ease.


* * * * *


And meanwhile North Korea sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by grift bringers,
Asleep ... expired ... or it malingers,
Stretched toward nuclear mischief, here beside you and me.
Should I, after Chirac criticizes,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have fumed and blasted, frowned and brayed,
Though I have seen my head (through digital prowess) brought in upon a platter,
I reap the profit -- and they’re no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the electoral Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
But being rich, was not afraid.


And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the briefings, the leaks, the planned duplicity,
Among the Congress, the talk of Homeland Security,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed my rationale into a ball
To roll it towards Dems’ overwhelming questions,
To say: "Here is Halliburton, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, they shall tell you all" --
If one, handing me a billion as a figurehead
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."


And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the protests and the emails and the orange alerts,
After the polls, after the court challenges, after the stock prices that trail along the floor --
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible that they say just what they mean!
But as if a media spindoc turned the opposition to applause on a tv screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a lawsuit or shaving off a decimal,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."


No! I am not Lincoln, nor was meant to be;
Am an covert planner, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the GOP; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.


I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall watch the consequences of the war unfold.


Shall I leave my notes behind? Do I dare to get impeached?
I shall privatize the gov’ment, and leave the budget beached.
I have heard the Four Horsemen singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.


I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When nuclear wind blows the water white and black.
We have malingered by the piles of war debris
By sea-gulls wreathed with oily seaweed dead and brown
Till Apocalyptic voices wake us, and we drown.

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