Mr President

 

‘The presidency doesn't exist to exercise power, it disguises power.’

– Anon

 

‘I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.’

– Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope

 

 

When Richard Nixon

Was the US President,

He told analysts

 

Of feelings of dread:

‘When I look in the mirror,

I see no one there.’

 

Brought up Christian,

He may have thought twice before

Bombing Vietnam –

 

He must have doubted

His right to decide whether

To end people’s lives.

 

For, if God exists,

How could you dare to play God?

It would drive you mad.

 

You’d wake up sweating…

‘I ordered the Pentagon

‘To fire those missiles;

 

‘I napalmed bodies;

‘I can see white phosphorus

‘Burning holes in flesh;

 

‘We thought that using

‘Depleted uranium

‘Was a good idea,

 

‘To harden the shells

‘And make them much heavier

‘So they’d penetrate;

 

‘I’ve seen the pictures;

‘There are children with two heads;

‘They’re in my mirror!

 

‘What are they doing…?’

‘Are you talking to yourself

‘Mr President?’

 

Another President is caught

In the late watches of the night

Going through the same ritual:

 

‘I ordered those drones

‘And thermobaric missiles

‘That incinerate

 

‘People in their homes;

‘Our crews shout “Crispy Critters”

‘And burst out laughing.

 

‘The Kill Teams I sent

‘In droves to Afghanistan –

‘They kill kids for sport.

 

‘By doubling budgets,

‘I paid for all their bullets

‘And their cameras

 

‘So US marines

‘Can shoot passers-by for fun

‘And then play clips back

 

‘And post them online.

‘Victim’s relatives see them

‘And I see them too.

 

‘As my soldiers shout

‘‘Got it on camera!” I’m their

‘Commander-in-Chief.

 

‘3rd platoon soldiers

‘Throw candy out of Stryker

‘Vehicles, drive through

 

‘Villages, shoot kids

‘Who run out to pick up sweets —

“We love Amriki!” —

 

‘Smiling at soldiers

‘Who then shoot them. Sweets and blood.

“Amriki, Am…” Bang!

 

‘Can you imagine?

‘I can’t believe I did it.

‘But the old me’s gone –

 

‘It’s not in the mirror.

‘All of this must go away.

‘I want me back please.

 

‘Look, I want me back.

‘Bring my old self back, right now.

‘I’m the President…’

 

‘I’m in the mirror.

‘I’m a very good person.

‘I’m the President.

 

‘I can do no wrong.’

But cognitive dissonance

And affectlessness

 

Take a heavy toll

On the man and his image

And they disappear.

 

For that ‘elect me’ smile

Will morph into a fixed grin

Ignoring torture

 

And carnage, sponsored

By a thousand US bases

Promoting Empire –

 

Bombarding Iraq,

Then Afghanistan, Yemen,

Somalia, Libya…

 

I’m the President who sells weapons,

In exchange for resources,

To inhuman despots

 

Enabling them

To loot their own countries and to

Murder opponents.

 

I make the world safe

For hypocrisy, Wall Street

And blood-money madness.

 

Improbable threats

To the US are detained

Indefinitely,

 

While kill-lists of US

Citizens are signed off in

The Oval Office.

 

For a President’s job

Is feeding the war machine

While talking of peace…

 

A bipolar job.

He farms US tax payers

While promising

 

That by his spending

Almost all their tax dollars

On security;

 

On the CIA;

On the State Department, and

On Congress;

 

On the Pentagon;

On subsidized weaponry

And on the President –

 

That everyone’s safe

But the truth is, war’s machine

Keeps Wall Street happy.

 

A black president

Invades Africa and Libyans

Are killed for oil.

 

The Empire’s demands

Outweigh human values.

It pretends they don’t.

 

A bipolar job,

Where you kill for a peace prize;

You attack six countries,

You launch cruise missiles

For ‘humanitarian’ wars

With B-2 stealth bombs

 

Then some fighter jets,

F-16s and F-15s.

‘We’re superhuman!

 

‘Yo! Geronimo!

‘Give me a high-five dude and

‘We’ll raise the roof-beams!’

 

Keep Guantanamo

For a concentration camp

Because of ‘bad guys’.

 

To have a conscience

Now means you’re a terrorist,

Like Chelsea Manning^xvii…

 

A White House mirror

Shows a former idealist

Now slaughtering non-stop.

 

He finds as he kills

That language goes flat. He speaks

In dull platitudes.

 

The power-hungry are doomed to starve –

If they feed only on their reflections

In the mass media;

 

All Presidents grow

Uneasy in their own skins

As their true selves fall

 

Into the abyss;

Tumbling and losing control.

Their meaning has gone –

 

Their thoughts are double-think.

Speech-writers write all their thoughts

For them to read out

 

From an autocue;

Their brain’s on the other line;

They disintegrate.

 

Their identity’s

Just a chain of feedback loops —

A bankers’ sock-puppet.

 

Their show’s continuous

Like Groundhog Day — atom bombs,

Agent Orange, drones…

 

And each President

Is interchangeable in terms

Of their body-mountains.

 

But when you take lives

You take away your own life,

To join the living dead.

 

So the mirror’s empty,

Exposing each President

As a lethal illusion.

 

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Money Brain Stone Heart ©Elena Caldera

 

 

The President of the United States Is Really a Tree

 

A sequoia in the Sierra Nevada is known as ‘The President’.

It’s a three thousand, two hundred-year-old redwood.

It’s two hundred and forty-one feet high, or twenty storeys,

With a billion pine needles that whisper, ‘Beat that!’

 

It was called ‘The President’ after Warren Harding,

One of the most pointless Presidents ever.

Harding himself admitted, ‘I am not fit for this office

‘And never should have been here.’

 

By contrast the arboreal President presides over a forest,

And has grown from a thin sapling to thirty feet round.

Like Louis Armstrong, the President’s gone from poor to rich

Without hurting anything or anyone on its way.

 

Not one of the White House’s serial imposters can say that.

Instead of sequestering carbon, producing oxygen

And refreshing the air, they deliver stale, wooden platitudes,

Scarring the world’s countries with their body counts.

 

In three thousand years this President’s crushed no bones,

It trod upon no one on the way up;

No one was tortured, no one killed, for this tree to ascend

With its effortless, breathtaking nobility.

 

Every tree’s relationship with its fellow trees is communal.

Trees warn each other under insect attack:

With chemical triggers, their collective immunity’s strengthened

Without single trees telling others what to do.

 

Man’s yearning for power and celebrity is rooted in fascism:

The idea of one person being adored by millions

Appeals to those who have their eyes on the seats of control.

But no one’s heard of fascist trees. It’s inconceivable.

 

The real President is still growing, in amongst its stand of trees

Known to local rangers as ‘The Congress’.

These Congressmen are uncorrupted by corporate lobbying,

They just soar in uncomplicated lines to the sky.

 

The real President is president because of its virtue

Not because it’s placed there by vested interests;