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Page 162

A Hoover is a vacuum cleaner. Why
would one want to clean a vacuum? To create
a double blank? Zero Squared, 0 0 (two blank eyes
staring at us). How odd to have three double-O presidents
in a row: cOOlidge, hOOver, rOOsevelt -- and almost, but
not quite, trOOman; those three and a half, plus
Teddy, no others. Double-O, licenced to kill.
Or orgasmic (also a kind of death-dealing): Oh! OH!
Cool! Who Rues? That is, Cool(idge), Hoo(ver), Roos(evelt).
True? (Man) (I sin. How are you?) (If I answered, Adlai to you.)

But their orgasms were discreet; whereas, Bill Clinton's legacy
("Is that a leg I see?" he perhaps said to start things rolling)
is a frozen heraldic profile, female kneeling, head vanishing
between legs of plump male, engorged, gules on a field
urgent, pants descendent, semi-reclined, head back,
mouth overt, eyes covert -- a tableau-
job.

Odd, how obsessed we were with the rise and fall
of Bill's little tower, how dwarfed his folly seems now
in the shadow of twin towers collapsing.

(But wouldn't it be nice, if some reporter were to ask Bill,
"How is your relationship with Hillary now?"
so that he could reply, "Close, but no cigar"?)

I'd rather remember his blowjobs than his snow jobs,
his lame apology for Rwanda, 800,000 slaughtered
because it was an internal matter (to humanity?).

Double-O, licence to kill, Double-U, found only
in a vacUUm (the two blank eyes have stared too long,
their eyelids now drooping), or a Bush (dubya, or
so they dub ya): Double your pleasure, double your fun
with Doubleyou, Doubleyou, Doubleyou Dumb.

But he's no dumber than you and you, fellow voters.
His particular W initializes "Walker". Only a walker,
but that suffices, for where can we run to?

Note: We'd apparently gotten off our theme (blankness), but, aha! "Hoover" (a brand of vacuum cleaner) is used as a verb to refer to giving a blowjob (as in "She hoovered him" – the hoover maneuver).

Stanza 1 is puny or punny: I take the first syllables of the three presidents with "OO" in their last names, and of them make "Cool! Who Rues?" Since FDR preceded Truman, I go forward with him ("True? (Man)), who is followed by Eisenhower ("I sin. How are you?) and Eisenhower's election opponent, Adlai (I'd lie – with a Southern accent) Stevenson. Just ignore the poet. He puns that way when he's tired.

Stanza 2: I mention their orgasms (also double "O!"s) were discreet. As was noted at the time, Bill Clinton was not the first president to fool around, just the one who got caught and was much attacked in the press for it. Roosevelt is one example of a President whose affair was known to the press, but not exposed. Later in the stanza I raise Clinton's disgrace to heraldic coat of arms status: "Gules on a field urgent", etc., play with terms of heraldry. "Urgent" puns "argent" (silver), so "gules on a field argent" means red against a silver background, but in this case, it's Clinton's aroused state, red on a field "urgent".

Stanza 4 refers to the testimony that Clinton teased Monica's public private parts with a cigar (not lit, I hope).

Stanza 5 refers to Clinton's apology for not having the United States intervene in the genocide in Rwanda – not even admit that genocide was occurring until after the killing was done. (Does Bush ever apologize for anything?)

Stanza 6 alludes to the old commercial jingle for Doublemint chewing gum: "Double your pleasure, double your fun with Doublemint, Doublemint, Doublemint Gum."

Stanza 7 requires a disclosure: The dumb voters ("you and you") who elected Bush include MOI! I wasn't fooled twice, though. One of the things I most resent about Bush is that he made me vote for John Kerry. Bush is, indeed, George Walker Bush. And indeed, with a Super Power waging its war on terrorism around the world, there's no where to run to. Perhaps one can hide on a blank page.

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