Hail to the Chief

You flash this filthy flower, your red pustule
with foul black winding sheet that is your final word.

This is your moment of fulfilment,
your argument that cannot be denied,

since everyone who sees this rose of death
is forced to feel the hate that tortures you.

It echoes on and on in desolate triumph
a set of images caught in facing mirrors

trapped in a split infinity : hate, hurt,
hurt, hate, irrational regress, endless,

your wasted world, where nothing grows,
no bird sings, only a lacerating hate

that stains your too-committed consciousness,
the perfect canvas of your world, with blood of babes,

and us, the bystanders, no longer innocent,
spattered with hate.

We feel a surge of hate for you, and so it goes
over and even until death, which does not part us,

until the pity that we feel for your split victims
can grow and blossom into a piteous love that swells

to cover the whole world until it swallows even you,
you pitiful child-leader, engulfing you in

pain-struck, hate-contaminated love,
the leader who in some way we have allowed

through lifetimes of inattention, to speak and act for us,
to mouth these foul excrescences, these blasphemies

against the Life that bears us,
to speak these bombs on our behalf .

We powerless to pity you enough, rightly to pity your pain,
condemned to heal or share your nightmare

‘til we die.



© Richard Lawson
01:12hr 15 July 2006