Sylvia Plath, you are one of my favorite poets, though 40 years dead. So forgive what I have done to your poem “Daddy.”
See it, below the fold:
DeLay
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which we have lived like a foot
For five Bush years, black and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
DeLay, we have had to defeat you.
You were indicted before we had time —
Money-heavy, a bag full of gold,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Presidential seal
And a head in that Sugarland Texas
Where corruption pours green over you.
In the rest of our beautiful country
We used to pray to get rid of you.
Yes, you.
In the American tongue, in the average town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of greed, greed, greed.
But the name of the town is common.
My struggling friends
Says there are thousands or more.
So we never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
We never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in our jaws.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ick, ick, ick, ick,
We could hardly speak.
We thought every congressman was you.
And your corruption obscene
An engine, an engine,
Driven over us by you.
By you in Austin, Boston, DC.
But we began to talk about you.
I think we began to understand you.
The snows of the Sun Valley, the clear beer of Wisconsin
Are not now pure or true.
You have poisoned them, taken our luck
And our dreams, and our dreams.
I hope we’re not a bit like you.
I have always been scared of you,
With your bug spray, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat cash stash
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You —
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every country adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand in Congress, DeLay,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the corrupt man who
Bit our pretty country in two.
I wish we could bury you.
In Austin, you they are trying
To get back, back, back at you.
To redeem us from the damage you do.
But they might pull you out of the sack,
And stick you back together with glue.
But then we will know what to do.
We found the source of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And we said that’s you.
So DeLay, We’re finally through.
The money telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.
If we’ve killed one corrupt man, we’ve killed two —
The Abramoff who said he was with you
And drank our blood for a year,
Five years, if you want to know.
DeLay, you can lie back now.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
DeLay, DeLay, you bastard, we’re through.
