Albino Pachyderms
(From The Triumph of Strife: an homage to Dante Alighieri and Percy Shelley)

White elephants sit in the living room
Like Johnson's Cyclops mother of a wife,
Inhibiting the conversation's bloom

Suggesting by their presence sordid strife:
Returns upon investments others made,
Supported troops supported out of life

Supporting politicians in the shade
Who can't support enough to get their fill.
Upon the treasury they make a raid

To profit from supporting those who kill.
With such support the troops deploy once more,
Their stop-loss orders telling them they will:

A back-door draft supporting troops galore,
Their Raven contracts honored "Nevermore."

Supporters of the troops roll in the dough,
Their carpetbagging no-bid contracts huge.
It's not the “what” but rather “whom “they know;

Their lobby toilet swirl a centrifuge
That separates no quo from any quid.
They figure after them comes the deluge,

So better get it now and get it hid;
A last-chance grab at all the graft that spurts
From under troop-supporting's toilet lid.

They chant their Mammon mantra till it hurts
To grease the skids for their corrupt cohort.
Out from their flapping lips their lying blurts:

"Support! support! support! support! support!”
For sport, for sport, for sport, for sport, for sport.

A "higher" father George the Worst consults,
Like Jesus putting Joseph in his place:
A put-down of his dad that got results,

Like Mama causin' Joe to lose his face
By fornicatin' with a larger dude
Who knocked her up and left Joe in disgrace,

The butt of village jokes both lame and rude.
A scarlet Hebrew letter marks his shame;
A cuckold branded for ineptitude

Whose ingrate stepson chooses to defame
The carpenter whose work earned him release
From doing business in the earthly game.

Like Zeus seducing peasant girls in Greece,
Old Yahweh came on down and got a piece.

Thus satisfied in his own mind, George plays
With legendary myths about his birth.
His limited attention span betrays

No grasp of any knowledge of the earth.
But with the Big Spook coaching him at night
He feels no consciousness of any dearth.

So anything, he figures, adds up right
As long as "up in heaven" Daddy grins
And says to disregard the nation's plight;

For nothing that George does can count as sins
To those who never think a dumb thing odd.
For all the lies and bullshit that he spins

They genuflect and kowtow to a fraud
Who swears that late at night he talks to GAWD.

White elephants mean waste on scales so vast
That few can comprehend the sunken cost
Or summon any samples from the past

To illustrate just how much we have lost.
But like the busted gambler who can't quit,
Dame Clinton hopes the sun will melt the frost.

And so into the wringer goes her tit,
While Betty Boops and pampered poops cavort;
Like flies about an open wound, they flit.

In pain, the faces of our troops contort
While she supports King George’s contract firms.
Such rank ingratitude at their "support"!

They only hope to finish out their terms,
These asinine albino pachyderms.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006-2010