BOOK XXXVII: CHENEY, By Himself in Secrecy
CHENEY, by himself in secrecy,
his 2 heads in2 a cone of silence;
neither hearing the other, neither
wanting to, needs to hear itself,
in perfect unity with dual-selves:
VPOTUS, ventriloqually, POTUS,
perfect economy of potential scale,
balancing act that none can top,
passes a perfect mirror & sees
himself in perfect unity. CHENEY
raises his right hand, his fist erect,
his erection, below it, his 3rd fist.
How do such tyrants stand for us?
Taller than hydrants, just as hard.
BOOK XXXVIII: Quondam Tam Abutere, O CHENEY
Quondam tam abutere, O CHENEY,
nostra patientia, intones Cicero,
in our times, on our soil, amazed
he’s back in the imperial Senate,
his head & hands still separate,
severed by enemies, nailed upon
the rostrum, but still pleading law.
Law counts for-shit, he now knows,
power counts. CHENEY re-counts
the number of hard balls hidden
behind his impregnable belt: 3, 4, 5,
stopping counting at a half-dozen.
A half-dozen balls make the M@n:
3 men, 3 clones, 1 monstrosity.
Book XXXIX: CHENEY Under Glass
"I will be revered forever for my services
during this international crisis," CHENEY
muses, dreaming of a granite monument
in which he stands, erect, in The District,
but where will it stand? On the Potomac,
or K-Street, Pennsylvania Ave., or beside
Maya Lin's Vietnam Wall? He's The M@n
of the Hour & the hour's quickly passing.
Maybe a gigantic hourglass of Iraqi sand,
CHENEY inside it, being slowly buried,
then flipped over, so it can begin again:
serial fame, eternal oblivion, under glass.
"I @m The M@n & the M@n I @m is Gr@nd,"
CHENEY automuses. "Revere me, y'all."
BOOK XL: Quarantined, CHENEY
Quarantined, CHENEY amuses himself with
doing sudoku puzzles from the daily paper,
finding them easier than he’d thought. “Shit!
This is like correspondence-chess for idiots,
double-entry accounting for morons” he chuckles,
thinking of all the people he’d set up as decoys
in his rise to hypertrophical vpotential power.
“Scooter’ll have prison-years to master sudoku,
unless that boozing punkass POTUS pardons
him, & he will; what the fuck's he got to lose?”
CHENEY dreams of a life of Paraguayan ease,
within sound of the Iguazu Falls, buried in the
Amazonian rainforest, “Fuck it! Who needs it!?”
Burn it! Who the fuck’ll ever really miss it?”
Book XLI: CHENEY Gingerly Weighs
CHENEY gingerly weighs his R b@ll
w/his L hand, his L b@ll w/his R hand,
his scrotum w/both massive hands, joking:
“Am I hung, or what?” ref.2 Saddam &
his half-brother’s hanging by their necks.
No such fate awaits CHENEY, VPOTUS,
shadow co-POTUS, in his hours of solitary
confinement in his mental castle/prison; w/
all the time in the World on his massive hands
he cups one b@ll, then another, a smile spreading
across his face: “Match these, Obama!” he chuckles,
“I came well-equipped.” If b@lls make The M@n,
CHENEY’s more than a M@n, he’s a gog, a magog,
a gi@nt. Each of his balls is a planetoid in itself.
Book XLII: Glimpsing CHENEY & Condi
Rice was Bush’s national security advisor when Libby worked for Cheney. If she were to emerge as a witness for the government, it would provide an additional glimpse into the inner workings of the administration.CHENEY recalls the day Condi Rice--Richard B. Schmitt LA TIMES, Thurs 17 JAN 07
opened the door to the Men’s Room
w/out knocking twice first. “Shit!”
he exploded, “Shit! Didn’t I tell you
this john was strictly For Boys Only?”
he bellowed, blowing Rice back out
in2 the hallway & on2 her skinny ass.
“No, don’t get uP,” snapped CHENEY,
“I like you down there, looking uP.”
Rice looked uP at his massive belt, be-
hind which his multib@lls were hidden.
“May I hold one of your b@lls? “she
asked politely, as CHENEY smiled:
“Think you can really…handle it?
If you do, then make my day.” His
zipper stuck, & she nastily smirked.
Book XLIII: CHENEY Counts Cables
CHENEY counts cables, paper, metal, any medium,
knowing they all contain data he alone receives.
"Lucky I can multiport & multitask via my VP-U-bus!"
Luck has nothing 2 do w/it, he's been cyber-fitted
2take all inputs. "I never sleep, my ports are always
open, alive2every danger," he tells himself, his mind
filling w/field reports from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran,
Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Indonesia, all the hot-spots.
"It takes a Br@in like mine 2handle all this input. No
garbage-in, just garbage-out for the media 2suck-up."
CHENEY knows what he knows; we know he knows it;
nobody knows the algorithm he uses2 scramble it in2
VPcode, comprehensible only 2his vpotential-Self.
Book XLIV: CHENEY Couldn't Make It
"CHENEY couldn't make it, his dick's broke,"
Scooter cracks as he lies down on the couch.
(The psychiatrist smiles.) "It needs a quick fix."
(The psychiatrist's eyebrow lifts.) "Quick, get
Mr. Fix-It!" "& who do you think is Mr. Fix-It?"
the shrink whispers patiently, quietly, stilly.
"Well, I am, of course, I'm His Chief of Staff,"
Scooter matter-of-factly states in a mild voice,
his wit finally emptied, "I'm His Chief of Staff."
"You were his Chief of Staff," says the shrink,
"You're under indictment now; you had to quit."
Scooter replies eagerly, "I left my work undone,
projects unfinished, goals un-, unattained.." "Be
that as it may," says the shrink, "You're to@st."
Book XLV: W/out CHENEY, Where Would I Be?
"W/out CHENEY, where would I be?"
Scooter ponders in his padded cell, as he
pounds the padded floor w/his forehead.
Thoughts come to him in waves, crests,
snapping watery tips like wet eyelashes.
He weeps to think of what he might do
for CHENEY at this very moment, if
only he were unbound, unpadded, free.
Free is the key to all his frustration. He
knows freedom drives CHENEY so far
that his enemies yearn to constrain him;
confine him to a padded cell, bind him.
Scooter repeats his mantra of liberation:
"Free CHENEY! Free CHENEY! Free!"
Book XLVI: CHENEY: I Hereby Declare
"I hereby declare all the dead, alive!"
writes CHENEY, in his priv.di@ry,
bound in the skin of a hound-dog
accidentally shot hunting 'coons.
"The dead will surely appreciate it,
The Armed Forces'll go along w/it,
The World will finally see I'm not
just a heartless Merchant of Death;
Life, Life fascinates me, Life
invigorates me, raises me to the
highest heights from which I see
the Future, far brighter than now;
though now's brighter than before."
Book XLVII: CHENEY: If I Only Had @ Nickel
“If I only had a nickel for every time I’d had
a noseful of nickels, I’d have a nickel-nose
the size of the Empire State,” says CHENEY,
making a crack at Giuliani’s expense. “Get it?
Rudy, you’re a New Yorker, you get my drift.”
Rudy smiles like the silvery gilt on a coffin-lid,
coming back at CHENEY w/ “If I had a dog
the size of your hog, I’d have to feed it ‘crats
to satisfy it. Dead ‘crats. Demo-crats. Get it?”
Book XLVIII: Digging Deep In His Pockets, CHENEY
Digging deep in his pockets, CHENEY finds
spare change, lint, paper-clips, used Trojan packs,
& a pen filled w/invisible ink. He tries out the pen
by invisibly writing his name on the Trojan pack,
but it only writes the invisible letters: CHE. "Fuck!"
says CHENEY, "Fuck Guevara, that motorcycle
homo, like Mal Forbes, that kids still try to imitate.
It's that red star on his beret; it sucks the kids in2
thinking he's some kind of a holy red angel, lit
from behind by leftwing Hollywood studios."
(to be continued)
Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco chapter of the National Writers Union.
