The views expressed in this poem are not necessarily mine, but, I am very angry at what is happening in / to our country that I fought proudly for, and will continue to do so. I apologise in advance if this angers anyone, as I'm sure it will, this is not my intent. I hope it is food for thought, as it was for me after watching GW's speech/spin last night. It was sent to me by a good friend (Purple Heart, Silver Star, 67/68 Marine grunt)
Lynn "Droopy" Gator 522, Croc 9, 67/68
I do not consider myself a liberal, nor a conservative. I am an American,
Hurricane
by Michael R. Gorman
Iraq
The Orwellian enemy nation du jour
Has become a nightmare.
What the Neocon Caesars once falsely claimed it was
They now have made of it
Lies become manifest
In desert browns
And young, red American blood
And rusted grays of hillbilly armored vehicles
A place re-fashioned in their image
Breeding ground for terror
Killing fields
Boiling cauldron without the healing herbs.
And we watched the nightmare
Being born
We trusted the midwives in Washington
And we prayed to be spared from
Over there, over there,
Even as our neighbors' children
Won't come back until it's over, over there.
Even the torture was over there
In prisons with foreign names
But now
The blood washes up on our shores
Iridescent red with an oil spill sheen.
Now the cancer has spread to our shores
Systemic cancer
Metastasized
A bitter diagnosis long denied
Spread to our vital organs
Along the gulf coast
In the wake of a hurricane.
And now the grim harvest
Of the Neocon breeders of terror
Is born on the bayou and
Ripens in the sickening sweet stench
Of the urine and fecal smeared Superdome
Indignation boils in the parched and hungry chests
Of those still clinging to rooftops
While the 72 hour critical rescue clock ticks down and stops
And the rescue efforts are suspended for fear
Of the victims in their righteous anger.
Police are ordered out of rescue mode
To enforce a zero tolerance policy
On the looting of water and food from Wal-Mart.
"No thievery in misery" is the traditional values response
To desperation
Even as
Police steal ammunition and guns from the unguarded stores
To keep them off the streets
Presumably to keep the toxics
Flowing free
In the currents down the boulevard
Of Southern dreams.
Police steal guns and ammunition
Because the good guys get to steal
According to
First Halliburton; Chapter 6; Verse 66.
And a little black boy
Unwashed for a week
Plays football in the Superdome
With the ball he found floating in the street
In his neighborhood turned poison swamp
(Dreams do come true in America, don't they?)
As the president flies over in Air Force One
Safely high above the holocaust he has created.
Yes you, Mr. President
Who played golf the day after the storm
You
Who will tour the area long after the storm hit
Don't you remember, Mr. President?
In 1990?
No, you don't remember much from 1990
Do you, Mr. President?
That was before you inherited the presidency
And the world became your toxic laden, red-tide oyster
In 1990
A federal task force showed
That for every two miles of wetlands
South of New Orleans
The storm surge would be reduced
By a half a foot
And the wetlands began to be restored
Until you
Mr. President
Reversed course
In 2001
Still wet behind your presidential ears
Reversed course
Like an ebb tide over asphalt
And turned the wetlands back to the developers
Mr. President
Remember, Mr. President?
How in early 2001,
Long before September 11th,
When the trash of your inauguration
Was still high in the landfill
The Federal Emergency Management Agency
FEMA
Issued a report listing two of the three most likely
Disasters to hit America in the near future as
A terrorist attack on New York
And a devastating hurricane in New Orleans
Mr. President
But you, eye already firmly planted on Iraq
Scoffed and did not want to hear anymore
About terrorists and flood plains.
In 2003
Do you remember, Mr. President?
You diverted the Federal Flood Control funds
To your dirty little war along the Tigris and the Euphrates
A biblical war
Righteous war
Holy war
Crusade you said
Worthy of draining the money for floods
Isn't that right, Mr. President
And in 2003
Mr. President
Do you remember, Mr. President?
You sent the National Guard to Iraq
One third of all of the National Guard troops
In Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia
To the desert
Where they remain dry
And remain and remain
Dry
And remain and remain
Fighting your war of lies
Conceived in duplicity
And dedicated to the proposition
That young men and women can die equally
For the multinationals
For your buddies' banks accounts
Soldiers dying
As their homes float in toxic soup
And their neighbors chant for help that does not come
I guess we citizens
Just misunderstood which nation was meant
By that name
National Guard
In 2004
Mr. President
You began robbing
The Federal Emergency Management Agency
And giving its accounts to Homeland Security
That absorbed FEMA like an ameba feeding
To pay for spying on Grey Panthers
And the monthly high teas
Of middle aged peace activists
Mr. President
In 2004
Mr. President
The Army Corp of Engineers wanted to study
How to protect New Orleans from flood
Mr. President
And you ordered the study abandoned.
And for good measure,
So they would know the price of disloyalty
To you and yours,
You cut from the federal budget
The money for the New Orleans
Army Corps of Engineers levee project
Even as local contractors
Worked for a year for free,
So dire were the predictions,
Mr. President.
In 2005
Mr. President
This year, remember, Mr. President?
You removed disaster preparedness
From FEMA's agenda
It's last great work, Mr. President
And gave more power to your
Homeland Security police state goons
FEMA that had a plan when Hurricane Andrew struck
It's flesh now gone from its skeleton
Held up by strings on the porch
Like a cheep Halloween decoration made in China.
But
As I'm sure you will remind us often
When The White House speaks and spins
You cut short your month long vacation
By two days
And flew to your Washington DC seat of power
A thousand miles further away from the Gulf of Hell
Than you were in Crawford
Mr. President.
Showed you cared
From the safety of your oval office
Can you hear the cries of the dying from there
Mr. President
Echoing above the dead wetlands?
Death upon death
With
Rescue efforts suspended for the first time ever
In such a disaster
Yours is an administration of firsts
We have to hand it to you
Mr. President.
Can you see the SOS signs
And the tears of a mayor
Begging for help
From the system to which he has dedicated his life's work?
Do you hear the gun shots over the water
Mr. President?
The police officers in flooded streets
Begging for food and water
To keep working
Mr. President?
Do you see the bodies floating
And bloating
And stinking
Mr. President?
Do you hear the babies crying until they can cry no more
Mr. President?
Not in a foreign land, Mr. President
Not Arab babies, Mr. President
Not partial birth babies, Mr. President
Not Afghani babies
Not Thai babies
Not African babies this time, Mr. President
Not terrorist babies
With cries too far away
For you to hear, or care, I guess.
No, Mr. President
It's bayou babies now
Louisiana babies, Mr. President
Mississippi River babies, Mr. President
French Quarter jazz babies, Mr. President
American babies too young for your war, Mr. President
Too young for choosing to believe your lies
Mr. President
Full birth babies, Mr. President
Red State babies Mr. President
Is your heart so soaked with oil and greed
That you cannot see the sheen of oil and shit
On the rivers that used to be their neighborhoods
Glistening like anti-rainbows swirling
Around mothers wading to hope that is not there
Mr. President?
And the storms grow in fury each year
Mr. President
Did you notice?
As the earth heats up
From your oil
From your arrogance
From your wars
From your lies.
It's really true, isn't it?
That one man can do so much
Isn't that true Mr. President?
One man's manifest destiny.
Your monster offspring is born again
A home birth this time
Emerging from the surf
On the shores of America
Happy birthday,
Mr. President.
Is this a great country or what,
When a frat boy can run the free world
Like a Kafka-esc cheerleader
With nuclear pom poms
While your home team of robber barons
Barrels down the field to score
In the end zone of the Astrodome Refugee Camp?
Just another temple to change the money in
While you shout pretty words
About freedom and liberty and values and God.
You lower the nation's flags to half staff for the Pope
But not for Black Americans floating in the hood
Even the Christian ones.
So tell us
What's the required yearly income for half staff?
What's the power quotient for honor?
Hell,
You can't even make up your mind
About which war and which reason for the war
You are touting this week
So why the hell would we expect you to look
Past your golf clubs to see
Kyoto
Afghanistan
Sudan
A free and defiant Osama Bin Laden
An angry North Korea
A crying Thailand
A chuckling Iran
Allies who can hardly say our name anymore
And the death
Beneath the Spanish moss and the magnolia trees
In your own U. S. of A.?
Perhaps,
Mr. President,
If you cleared a little more brush
From your Texas ranch
You could see
The tears of Cindy Sheehan
Becoming the tears of a nation
Mr. President
But you don't.
And you won't.
So I gotta say,
Mr. President,
I gotta say,
May the ghosts of the Gulf
Haunt you for all of your days
I gotta say,
Mr. President,
Fuck you Mr. President
Fuck you George Dubya Fucking Bush
Fuck you
You are not my president
I disavow you
I disown you
I deny you
You stole two elections
And you wasted the office you stole
To fatten your friends
And yourself
You are a thief
You are a coward
You are a liar
You are a sycophant
And blood
Is on your hands
You are no President of mine
No President of mine
Fuck you, George W. Bush.
Copyright 2005 by Michael R. Gorman
All rights reservedPoetGorman@aol.com
(Mr. Gorman gives his permission for this poem to be reproduced in any way as long as it includes this notice and as long as it is not
used for commercial gain. Commercial use of any kind must be with prior written permission from the author.)