na na na na na na na na
hey hey hey
GOODBYE!


Cara Ober, Collie, 2008

MY LEGACY
-- by anon

I set your house on fire,
robbed your neighbors in broad daylight
with your clothes on, in a mask of your face,
and left behind only their bills, their booze, their guns,

then I dusted your menagerie with flakes of DDT,
dumping selenium in the river that runs through it,
all to undermine your marriage, which, oddly, improved mine,
so I tacked on your vacation days to mine,

even though I barely put in bankers hours –
it’s this cool deal they call Eminent Domain!,
and still I made the time to spread my message of duct tape and despair,
Far and Wide and East and West and North and South.

Now like Shane I must be going. Saddle up my private jet.
No, don’t say it, it’s embarrassing, the gratitude, the love.
These years of public service have been the best years of my life.


APOLITICAL TUMBLING TUMBLEWEED
- by Dennis Mahagin

Awkward silence at the tail end
of the film strip

whipping off
like Bicycle cards
spoke-pinned and spinning
in gradual deceleration,

as the smoke clears, and a new
Inauguration nears, yet still

you stand here,
like Tom Mix in Sunday best,

--what a freaking
theatrical sunset!

--what a freaking
theatrical sunset!

Dearest Junior,
we knew Gary Cooper--and you
are no Gary Cooper circling
the wagons of an eight-year
stupor, truth is

you embarrassed us, you put a somber pall
on the old town hall meeting of Rich Uncles
and Interventionists-- point of order and
matter of fact you brought us

down,

and now we pass around
the collection crown,
to scrounge

enough leverage to run you
out of town, in the wake

of the horrific Carnival Accident,
fallout of your ill-advised, hardly
authorized climb into the cockpit

of Tilt-A-Whirl & Combine-Two, high
centered and pinwheeling on the midway,

daisy chained
hot metal seats of the crazy
ride breaking loose
from centrifugal,

a deadly Gulliver Scythe
upon the tarmac raining
viscera and limbs.

"CAN'T SOMBODY TAKE IT
AWAY FROM HIM!" we screamed, we donned nylon
ski masks, and winged many rocks at that old cockpit, trying
to make it stop, until some Black Ops Psych Doc genius cued
up the Marty Robbins record on Public Address (denouement
of Mars Attacks!)and you switched off the ignition, kicking
back, kicking back, to have you a good listen.

Well, have you?

Junior, Junior,
Junior are you listening
now? Please be long
gone out

of town,
before sundown,
akimbo-limbed
egress in
wind-blown
leaps and bounds,

else at last
we'll have no

choice but to go
all Nukular Winter
on your sorry ex
extant executive

ass.


-------
In DC Inaugural weekend? The Foreign Press are playing Monday January 19, 2008 at Solly's (11 and U, nw) as part of the Sun Committee Pre-Inauguration Ball. With: Sun Committee, Ugly Purple Sweater, Amateur Hour and Levi Stephens. 8pm. $5. For more information: click here.

-- back after Obama is sworn in.