Holiday 2015 - THE POTOMAC



Three Poems

Robert Cooperman

"President and the First Family Murdered by the Tea Party,"
Article in The National Reporter:
The Second American Civil War

Storming the president's hitherto
secret compound, Tea Party guerillas
shot him, his wife, and young son dead,
then displayed the heads, impaled
on ceremonial swords reputed
to have belonged to Robert E. Lee,
Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis.

"Fitting vengeance!" the leader shouted,
to cheers, "for him daring to presume
he was fit to govern our nation of patriots."

When asked how the commandos
had located the president's refuge—
previously considered impregnable—
the leader smiled, "A little bird told us,"
implying a sleeper inside the security team.

"Cutting off the traitors' head should
end the war," the leader smirked at his pun,
and the press corps joined in, knowing
the nature of the country's new power elite.
"Though I give that scoundrel credit:
he fought to the end and pleaded only
for us to let his wife and child go,
but he was in no position to beg for anything."

The fighters then withdrew to what
one media wag quietly termed, "The Very
White House," to continue their celebrations,
all but assured victory was finally theirs.

"Swift Retribution":
The National Reporter:
The Second American Civil War

Even as the Tea Party celebrated
their assassination of the First Family,
and displayed their heads—including
their young son's, on swords once worn
by Lee, Jackson, and Jefferson Davis—
elements of Society for Progressive Change
were silently massing for a counter-attack.

Since forces on the right had assumed
they'd delivered a death blow to their enemy,
by murdering the president—who throughout
the war had pleaded for sanity from both factions—
they had posted no sentries, while revelers
slashed any likeness of the President.

But fires in various parts of the building—
set by the staff—soon put an end to
the riotous behavior; Partyers panicked
from the building, and were machine gunned,
a handful escaping into the night: even darker
by the absence of street lights, the power grid
destroyed by saboteurs on both sides.

In an emergency session, the Vice President
was sworn in as Commander–in–Chief
and took an oath "to bring this war to a speedy,
successful conclusion." In a perhaps symbolic
gesture meant to prove his grit, he declared
he would wait in the retaken Oval Office, armed
and with trusted members of his security team.

Randall Myers, an Officer in Society for Progressive Change:
The Second American Civil War

When our friends on the Right,
or the Wrong, as we grimly joke,
assassinated the First Family,
they thought they'd crushed our spirit
like adders crawling from the Wrong's Eden.

All they did was enrage even their less insane
followers, since the President was a voice
for reason—dithering, some would accuse—
throughout the war that the Wrong instigated,
but which we intend to finish. Displaying
the First Family's heads on swords allegedly
belonging to "heroes" of the First Confederacy
rallied our troops to howl for retribution.

What was a flagging, dispirited rag–tag
is once again a committed, ruthless army.
If victory means killing every last one
of our enemies, the blood's on their own heads.

In life the President was less than the leader
we'd wished, but in death he's our martyr,
leaving us in a blaze of assault-rifle glory,
so every bullet we fire, every bomb we drop,
will be etched with his name: our saint, our savior,
who gave his only life and the lives
of his beatified wife and son for the holy cause.

  
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