by Renée Guillory
If you want to find Tony Blair
look nowhere, man - then look at the
Sardinian Cliffs, which draw beleaguered
ministers like a magnet.
If you want to find George Bush, check
under Lance Armstrong's saddle, and then
in the ditch where the soldier's mother
decided she's had enough and
took out a handful of shiny nails, and -- when
the secret services were getting their autographs --
laid them across the road.
She's not malicious or violent.
She just needs to give good ole boy
George an earful.
And she likes her world leaders
with a bit of slapstick.
"Brush off the dust, Mr President,"
she might have said. "And while my
mother lies quietly in the hospital
and my son screams from his grave,
talk to me about how much you
need this war."
The force of her challenge knocks him
over and the president implodes in just
3 ... 2 ... 1
A puff of smoke and an unsettling dream
are all he leaves behind.
But the beat goes on all over the world.
"The U.S.," our Voice of America announcer
keeps insisting, "is YOUR DESIGN SOURCE for
DEMOCRACY".
And where still is Tony Blair?
Has he gone? Or gone mad? Has his sycophancy
finally been punished by angry Londoners,
who recently woke again to their long-sleeping nightmare
of terror and falling rubble. A nightmare of dark skies
and hunger
that had been forced back by the
psychedelic lights and glowing Apples of
It-dom in the 60s.
Has the prime minister been kidnapped by Karl Rove?
Is he Bible-tied, pistol-whipped?
Isolated in a hell of his own making by
kowtowing in the first place?
Has he passed the loyal opposition's torch,
or doused it?
Where is the dream for our Reconciliation Park? Has it
reached the all-important model-building stage?
Is it a dusty diorama, a Sabbath fancy--
this comical idea of peace in our bloody time?
Is it a punch line?
Is it still a living hope?
Is it a paint-splattered scar on the walls of the hanging
garden?
Or is it some other wall we need to build,
or tear down?
Renée Guillory is an author, musician and grassroots organizer. Her latest book is Best Hikes with Dogs - Arizona.