Apologies to T. S. Eliot

1. The Burial of the Dead

October is the cruelest month, breeding

scandals out of the thin air, mixing

pageboys and desire, stoking

Dimwits with false hopes.

Midterms kept us warm, covering

ass in cynical show, adding

Animation to the party.

Presidentials surprised us, rising over the Florida coast

in an ocean of chads; we stopped at the Supreme Court,

And went down to defeat, not into the Whitehouse,

And drank Uisce Beatha, and cried in our drafts.

Bin Ladin you mother, terror an issue?, eff you.

And when we were adults, staying at the compound,

My father’s, I took her out in my car,

And showed her my cock.  I said, Mary,

Mary Jo, hold tight.  And down we went.

In the Senate, there you feel free.

I booze, most of the time, and wake up well hung over.

What are these roots that nut, what vict’ries grow

Out of those bloggy cesspools? Sons of Marx,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

From heaps of fauteaux images, what the Kos spews,

And the dead tree media as well, this whiskey’s no relief,

And the best lies all come from Reuters.  There is

water at the bottom of the ocean,

(Let the days go by, let the water hold me down),

But I will show you something different from either

A John F. Kennedy rallying the nation

Or my brother Bobby bleeding in L. A.;

I will show you fear in the form of Karl Rove.

Fresh blows da vind

Vit’ a new attitude.

Voters ain’t shtupid

I tsink ve’re shcrewed.

‘You gave me higher hopes first a year ago;

‘They called me the front-running pol.’

-Yet when I came back, late, from the congressional recess,

Your backs turned, and your eyes down, I could not

Speak, and my heart failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, no one had my back,

Looking into the face of Rahm, the silence.

Obama my ass.

Madame Pelosi, famous realtor,

Has a cold heart, nevertheless

Is known to be the sharpest woman in Congress,

With one mean stab in the back.  Here, said she,

Is the deal, the victories of last year–,

(Those ideas, they just won’t work.  Look!)

Here’s Barack Obama, The Rock Star of the Left,

The best chance we have of winning.

Here is Gore who’s just plain wacked, and here Kerry,

And here is Hillary Clinton, with baggage,

a ton, baggage Bill has heaped upon her back,

And it’s a big loser for us.  Forget working

the Center:  Think Joe Liebermann.

I see crowds of people, voting Dem in ‘08.

Finis. If you see dear Rahm Emanuel,

Tell him it’s time to out another Rep:

One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,

Under the cold rain of November’s dawn,

A crowd flowed to the voting booth, so many,

I had not thought so many dead could vote.

Signs, wide and quite vulgar, were displayed,

And each corpse fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down into the street,

To where Saint Zogby rigged the exit polls

With much hyping from the cast at GMA.

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: ‘Kerry!

‘You who accused Bush of the sins of My Lai!

‘That shit you pitched last time in your campaign,

‘Has any of it stuck?  Will it sell this year?

‘Or has the public finally wised to it?

‘O what a Bitch this is, this election,

‘I’m sick of fighting Rove by flinging shit!

‘Stiff! Hypocrite loser! – faux Patrician!, – scheisskopf!’