Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
jeanne koster
63 years old
SD
Serve statewide membership of South Dakota Peace & Justice Center from an office in Watertown, SD.
The Face of Laura Bush 9/20/01
Did you see the face of Laura Bush that night when he said what he said to Congress? And to the American people? And to the later astonished people of the world?
("Later astonished," I say, because the people of the world needed time to add it all up, because at that moment they still wanted to put their arms around us, to console us and to grieve with us for the loss, the pain of many -- and many of those guiltless, especially the waiters and toilet cleaners and the unparented children;for the loss of Father Mychal Judge, the gay and beloved priest for peace; for the heroism of public servants who perished their way to apotheosis.
What His Occupancy said was . . . [Be this utterance recorded for grim satire in ages to come] what he said was, "They hate our freedom," and all the money must go for endless war, "THE WAR OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY."
Did you see the face of Laura Bush, stunned, fit for translation to marble? Her face reveals that the Creator has blessed her with horror.
How to render the Paxilated, captive dread in those eyes, when he said what he said? I leave that to the sculptor, with his (or her) chisel.
OR, WAIT. Instead, I can make her marble, with my own conceiving.
Ah! Do I impute my own astonishment to the people of the world? Do I project onto Laura Bush my own dread? Very well, then. I impute. I project.
Grasp the imputation. Grab hold of the projection, Laura. Hang on. It will steady you as you climb up, onto your pedestal -- your last fleshly act before I conceive you to marble.
You do have the pedestal to your marble? Mothers and matrons have those pedestals, as all acknowledge and preachers prate on every Second Sunday in May. You brought it with you, surely, to Washington of all places. Now is the time to employ it, the time appointed by the timeless Creator, from before time but for time -- this time. You must have wondered lately why you ever got mixed up with these people. Well, this is why. It's intended from before time.
Here. Brace yourself. Climb up. Out of reach of the Dick who would chain thee. Clear of glitter-eyed Donald (Rumslove is it? Or Strangefeld?). Too high for fang-ed Paul, a wolf in his wits. Too high for rigid yet unpleasing Tom. Too high for obtuse and pie-faced John, who would reduce the Constitution to ash. Safe from the sleekly suited vessel of ophidian menace, charming Condi. Safe from Richard Perle, the snarly Prince of Darkness. (A relative, is he, of the perles,that guard the reverend throat and royal blue bosom of Dowager Barbara?)
Climb up. Your pedestal will overtop the bully pulpit of His Occupancy, the otherwise unrivalled Dubya. From your pedestal your marble self can compel him -- to his knees, to beg for just one drop of water to moisten his tongue, one tear from your stone eye.
Compel him. Mothers and matrons can do this. You should know. You are a librarian. It's in all the literature. Compel him to do a one-eighty. To turn from you to us, still on his knees. When he does, allow him the one tear upon his dam-ned tongue -- just enough to restore voice for the ceremony of repentance and renunciation -- of our freedom.
Our freedom, that is, to blast to dust the rubble of tormented nations. Our freedom to irradiate their lands, cursing the bones of their future with, perhaps, depleted uranium ordnance, perhaps tactical nukes, perhaps robust nuclear earth penetrators -- AS we might deem necessary. Our freedom to betray the bravery and loyalty of our beauteous young, who accept without question that their mission is to stand between mortal danger and the folks back home.
Freedom to commandeer the oil. To mine the harbor. To bomb the wedding party. To gormandize habitually on beef, cheese, peaches, and chocolate yet manage to appear imperially slim about the middle, while children in Afghanistan or North Korea appear marvelously swollen about the middle after just so few meals of grass.
Freedom to rule the earth -- and the heaven over the earth. To threaten. To smash. To dominate. To terrorize -- with impunity.
Oh, we are so weary of that freedom. Oh, we do NOT love it. It will drag us down to Hell, with Dubya.
Compel him to renounce it and
TO GIVE BACK THE MONEY.
If he will use your tear for that, you shall have the Nobel Prize. And more. For generations, mothers will name their daughters Laura even in the oddest countries, where little girls are never now called Laura.
If he will only beg pardon, most will give it. No hard feelings.
Your face will relax. I will conceive the rest of you back to flesh, and you can come down.
Then, take him by the hand and raise him up. By repenting, he will have been saved. His own stone heart will have turned to flesh, and he will have tears of his own.
Seeing this, a first few in furious al-Qa'ida will marvel and step forward to shake hands with Quakers. We will all embrace. The world will cheer as together . . . we imagine.
