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  Lyle Daggett  
   
 
     
     

george w. bush awakes among the whirling dervishes

who are these people dancing around me
                                                  who aren't dressed like me?
lights and shadows and voices and music
                                                   move with their bodies.

in the olive grove a dove gazes at me
                                                with the eyes of a woman.
men bring me bundles of papers to sign
                                                     but i can't see their bodies.

waving and spinning the figures ignore me,
                                                  for some unknown reason.
when i announce the future of the world
                                           you must start counting the bodies.

i hear a hollow flute sound, a sound like breeze
                                                                   or leaves rustling.
it almost sounds like someone's talking,
                                                      like people with bodies.

the walls are marked with writing
                                              i've never learned to read.
if we ignore history we become ghosts
                                               wandering the earth without bodies.

i command the sun to rise and the moon to set,
                                                              but they don't obey me.
there is much we could accomplish on earth
                                  if we were not confined to these bodies.

outside the street fills with workers singing
                                                 that the lion of revolution is awake.
the sound makes me shaky, and weak,
                                                     like others with mortal bodies.

i'm george w. bush and i never approved this message:
                                                                    looking straight at me,
the dancer in a white robe gestures and calls out
                   "visitors! wake up! come back now to your bodies!"

     
     
     
 
   
     
 
 
       
  Copyright © 2010 Pemmican Press and the author/artist represented.