Dick Cheney shoots Partridges in Pear Trees

DICK CHENEY SHOOTS PARTRIDGES IN PEAR TREES
[IN ROSA PARKS' AMERICA]

CANTO 1

Dick Cheney, some say
he shot partridges in pear trees
mistaking them for green goblins
wearing oil drums instead of pumpkins
on thanksgiving day
when turkeys gobbled like princes
in a great white palace
with crystal chandeliers
hanging all the way down
from a ceiling filled by
the Colour Purple ...

Some say Dick was born squint,
and therefore he has a perpetual habit
of shooting in the opposite direction,
whether it is towards luckless lawyers
whom he really wants to kill,
or foolish turkeys which strut
to kill a quail
in a bird's nest
oblivious to oily feathers
and slick Godfathers
acting alongside Marlon Brando lookalikes
in some bawdy horse show
in Hale and Hearty button mushroom gardens,
shrieking without tenderness
in a barnyard
filled with pigs
sloppy ugly bushy-eyed pinkertons
mking a gigantic mess
of the treasury bills
in the house of bushes, roses
and autumn leaves ...

If you ever see dear Dick
gazing fondly at a statue of Rosa Parks
and muttering bloody hell -
it aint for her bus seat
that he is pining for -
for his pocket is full enough today -
he had immunity during the war
that Daffy Duck had with a sad sombre tiger,
and how madly they ran into
the great wall of China -
loaning great hunks of gold,
and losing it all at once,
and blaming it on subterranean forces
beneath the blue-black sea
of Iceland ...

If ice can become fire in a day
and quails can become turkeys in two,
perhaps bushes can become the cedars of Lebanon
in seven years in Tibet
and Brad Pitt can give a lecture
on human rights to those goddam communists
and force them to free Tibet
in seven seconds flat ...

So who's listening to a bushy eyed kangaroo these days?
Not me for sure, Mr Pinkerton.
Madam Butterfly aint my cup of tea
perhaps butterflies are free today
in Dick Cheney's quail farm
in some obscure part of Arizona
or Texas or ...
some grand oil well
stuck in the quagmires of Baghdad
where the oil smells and tastes better
than the perfumes of Arabia,
which cannot bring you
30 million gold nuggets and sapphires
'cos they are stuck
in another oil field
where the security risks are not
as bad
as the barrel coming out of an oval office
shaped like a den of foxes
to swindle a fairy godmother
in Snow White
into giving her secrets
to the infamous clowns
who run round like rabbits in a crazy race
only to leave the entire world
in a blooming daze ...

So, Mr Dick Cheney is so loved in Kansas City
and soon he will be given Cadillacs
by all the quails in South Africa
who will fly across the Atlantic
to perform ritualistic turkey dances
to celebrate his birthday
with a ring in his nose,
Dick will have to dance like a turkey then
to entertain the masses
all over the world
to impress them that he is actually clean
and free from debt and the butchery of slaves
in the Ivory Coast and the sunken ports
all the way
from Basra to the Tigris and Euphrates,
or else the red parrots of Kenya
will be very disappointed
and the mynahs of Indonesia equally so:
to see such a thin man as he
refuse to dance
to celebrate the culling of Red Indians
on a salubrious September summer day
when Nat King Cole will appear in a dream
alongside Martin Luther King
and Rosa Parks too,
all serenading him
with a lullaby from Broadway -
only in heaven it will be called -
the lull before the storm,
or Judgement Day ...







Canto 2

in the august chambers of Auschwitz
i saw a fat sad befuddled turkey
groaning in pain as arthritie crippled him
and Sad Mary slithered over his knees
pleading for him
to return gold dust
to the holy grail
to return all golden quail eggs
to their rightful owner -
the Czar of Russia :
from whom he stole them
in 1617 :
when slavery and St Petersburg
were in their infancy :
a return of gifts and golden eggs
in the solemn somber feast of Easter
or on Ash Wednesday,
when repentance is required
would be ideal ...

But turkeys often mistake Easter eggs
for quail eggs in a bowl of laksa
and Charles Dickens for Dick Cheney,
a very intelligent man
a man of honour,
who actually sailed to Venezuela
in the summer of 1942
to kiss the foot of Chavez
an oil baron whom he loved
more than money or gold or nose rings ...

But Venezuela spurned the fat turkey
and sent him to the Bay of Pigs
and the Russians mistook him for a pig
they had seen in Siberia
fat, loathsome and always hunting
for food
in an abbatoir in Turkey
which hated pigs more than rice pudding ...

And so to Istanbul, my dears I must go,
to find out what the dickens is Thin Dick
doing in Istanbul worshipping at the Blue Mosque
when he is actually registered as a spy from heaven
meant to save sinners from hell,
meant to be a good shepherd to lost sheep,
meant to play poker with Vincent van Patten and win
meant to play the Godfather with Marlon Brando -
in heaven perhaps - if he gets there -
he will definitely do
provided the Good Lord
allows him through its gates,
along with his golden eggs
hatched from Nowhere I know,
but filled with the yolk of Haliburton,
gold and glistening
and ever so bewildering in its
mercurial beauty,
so captivating that even the Cheshire Cat
envies little Dick Whitington
in his pure white socks
acting as Puss in Boots
and playfully toying with
the idea of becoming
the Marquis of Carabas
in a bus load filled with oil merchants
going on a safari to Johanessburg
to shoot tigers at dusk
at the dawn of creation
at the dusk of civilization
silently
when God is not watching
to steal ivory from the poor Africans
and sell them to those bloody communists
who took Tibet with the stealth of thieves
and then shut them up for good,
forcing the Dalai Lama to flee
over the mountains of his beloved country
into the wilderness
as Fat Dick skulked like a muffled penguin
in a hot bath filled with rubber dickies
and ducks swimming in a yellow oil bath
screaming Fat Dick come and lick our oil
Lick it with your fat tongue
and cleanse our beaks
from the bittermint of sorrow
from the filth of those goddam communists
Be our saviour, wail the thin ducks of Siberia,
the white egrets who perform a dance
before the great leader in Pyongyang
before flying across the Pacific
to lay by the side
of a barrack filled with guns and canons
used by Thin Dick
in his callow youth ...


Canto 3

In the summer of 42
when Troye Donahue was walking down Sunset Boulevarde,
Dick Cheney accosted him
and accused him of jay-walking,
or so says the carbuncular man
of the Wasteland,
whom I met in Hiroshima
after Dr Robert Oppenheimer had died.
He told me an airy-fairy tale
of Dick Cheney feeding the puffin penguins of Chile,
which he mistook for hot chicks in Soho
and whom he thought he could offer
oil in a barrel
for twice the price.

But poor old Dick forgot,
puffin penguins cant oount as well as he,
they did not become scholars
nor did they study trigonometry
or the enigmatic equations of Pythagaros,
and neither penguins or polar bears
whom they are rather fond of
can waddle like ducks like Dick can
whenever he goes to a masquerade party
with the Red Guards of the Guangdong province
to shoot pandas - purely for fun -
since he loves seeing them dance the tango
'cos that's when the price of oil escalates sharply
and he can make enormous deals
just tiptoeing through the tulips
smoking a Cuban cigar or two
and putting on a Halloween mask
whilst pretending to be tbe green goblin of Harlem ...



Canto 4

Oh, Dick, thin tall Dick :
what the Dickens art thou doing now?
Cant you go to Vietnam
and exhume all those coffins
and pour some inflated oil onto
those troops you danced with
when Nixon fell at Watergate?

Or was it your brother Richard Chamberlain
who you deserted to go to war in Iraq
with Soupy Sales and Mr Magoo,
after his Studebaker came to a sudden halt
in the virgin forests of Brazil ...


Canto 5

We hear Mr Cheney that besides being brilliant
with shooting turkeys in Istanbul
and puffin penguins in Grandma Walton's backyard
that you're also a sportsman
and once won an Olympic gold medal
in the Berlin Olympics
for the marathon ...

Now that is indeed an ideal achievement,
considering you're so plump and tubby,
with a stomach that droops down before you,
so much that you have to hop over it
like a kangaroo -
and pick it up at supper
after breakfast at Tiffany
with Audrey Hepburn ...

Oh, what will Charles Dickens say
when he meets you some time
in the crazy lazy days of summer
when he descends in a rapturous cloud
and appears to you in a dream ?

What the dickens, Dick,
have you done to America?

America the Great was when you came in?
America the Betrayed, is when you left it,
with a thousand oil drums in your backyard,
and without a single penny to pay for it.

Dick, I think you'd better go to Alcatraz
and sleep till the sun sets on Hollywood Boulevarde
or else they'll ask Brad Pitt to play you
in a sprawling movie called
Good Times without Dick
or Farewell to Arms : Shootout in Babylon
and your fat cherubic grinning face
will be seen in bright dazzling lights
all over the goddam world
though how many would line up to see a movie about you
only the quails of Malaysia
and the turkeys of old Istanbul will know.

Goodbye Dick - farewell
Adieu - may Haliburton be yours forever more
till Sir Thomas More tells you
about martyrdom
and what it really means
to die for your country
and explains in simple language
what gluttony and greed are
and why audits are necessary
what Truth is
and what Heaven is :
and why he had to defy a king
to save his soul from hell
once when the world was much younger
than you or I will ever be ...





a quail ilike prima donnas so convincingly
their goblets look like wine glasses

others say he's such a great liberal
that he would be the first to approve
of laws to free slaves from captivity
be they glum faced goblins
or dour democrats
fighting for liberty
in Auschwitz ...

Others say gun rules are
a breach of democratic principle
others say Michael Fay
should have the last say
before deciding on
what exactly is law,
what precisely is a low down trick
and what metaphorically
is none of the above
but a hocuc-pocus way
of giving some leeway
to republican dogs
pursuing caterwauling cats
all the way to Great Babylon
only to witness the rape of Mesopotamia
and the bombing of grand citadels
which once housed
the greatest exhibits
of the cradle of civilization ...

Did anybody witness Dick
and was Harry around
when Dick was busy loading his rifle?
Can a lawyer be as fat and lugubrious
as a blundering turkey
walking right into the path of attack?

Who was hiding behind the bush -
George, Bill, Dwight or Jim Carey?
Who did the autopsy on the partridge?
Was an autopsy done in any way -
or do certain democratic countries
do autopsies only on dead persons,
and not dead pheasants, geese and turkeys
which sometimes have a funny habit
of masquerading as men
especially when they're trying to hide something
from the eyes of the law,
from the prying investigative eyes
of All the President's Men
in the Sandwich Islands?