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Christopher T George
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 1273
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 11:14 pm: | 
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Presidential Inauguration 2005/1905
I. George W. Bush, January 2005
I'm waiting for the Red, White, and Blue Revolution
as I gaze across from work at the Federal mausoleums,
those office blocks, thirties cement from Ur
or Moscow left from FDR's Amerika, as pigeons sit
and huddle and crap in the January freeze.
I wait for the patriotic surge into the streets
to ask why El Presidente spends
millions on his inaugural balls
(Balls is right!) while
kids die of malnutrition in Appalachia
and El Paso and flames lick the inside of a Humvee
in Najaf and an occupational therapist fits a vet
age nineteen for new legs at Landstuhl Hospital.
George W. Bush prepares his inaugural address,
lifts barbels in the White House gym, flexes
his fingers of the hand that shook the hands
of Ahmed Chalabi, Yassir Arafat, and Vlad Putin.
II. Teddy Roosevelt, March 1905
Teddy's Rough Riders gallop down the Avenue
of the Presidents, the yellow- and brown-skinned
Filipino and Puerto Rican scouts reminding
everyone of the imperium's new responsibilities,
now that the Maine has been sunk, not
by the Spanish as yellow-breath Hearst trumpeted
but by self-combustion down in the coal bunkers,
and Look! There's Geronimo marching,
sure proof that the West is tamed!
The nation feels exuberant and optimistic,
Old Europe might creak and groan and boom
its naval guns in Channel firing drill,
but our cavalry still won on San Juan Hill.
A Gatling gun, an observation
balloon drifting overhead, the Riders' snorting
mounts, just not the one-sided affair we thought--
the Spanish fought with grim determination, inflicted
three times their own casualties.
"We are the heirs of the ages," Teddy exclaims,
his toothy grin lit up with the new electricity.
And why would anyone doubt it, the millionaire
smoking his Havana corona, or Sal, the gum-
chewing B-girl with the star-spangled garter?
Christopher T. George
Christopher T. George
North American Editor
Ripperologist
http://www.ripperologist.info
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Lindsey Millar
Inspector
Username: Lindsey
Post Number: 213
Registered: 9-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, January 15, 2005 - 8:26 pm: |
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Chris,
We will never see eye to eye on this, I suspect, but I love your poetry anyway. Always have.
Luv,
Lyn
"When a man grows tired of London, he grows tired of life" (or summat like that)
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