Hail to the Chief

Hail to the Chief

By Richard Lawson

You flash your filthy flower, your red pustule

with foul black winding sheet that is your final word.

This is your moment of fulfilment,

your argument that cannot be denied,

since everyone who sees this rose of death

is forced to feel the hate that tortures you.

It echoes on and on in desolate triumph

a set of images caught in facing mirrors

trapped in a split infinity : hate, hurt,

hurt, hate, irrational regress, endless,

your wasted world, where nothing grows,

no bird sings, only a lacerating hate

that stains your too-committed consciousness,

the perfect canvas of your world, with blood of babes,

and us, the bystanders, no longer innocent,

spattered with hate.

We feel a surge of hate for you, and so it goes

over and even until death, which does not part us,

unless the pity that we feel for your split victims

can grow and blossom into a piteous love that swells

to cover the whole world until it swallows even you,

you pitiful child-leader, engulfing you in

pain-struck, hate-contaminated love,

the leader who in some way we have allowed

through lifetimes of inattention, to speak and act for us,

to mouth these foul excrescences, these blasphemies

against the Life that bears us,

to speak these bombs on our behalf .

We powerless to pity you enough, rightly to pity your pain,

condemned to heal or share your nightmare

‘til we die.

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Dr Richard Lawson was born in Hayling Island, Hampshire, UK in 1946, qualified in medicine (Westminster Hospital) in 1969, and travelled overland around the world in 1971-2. After seven years of hospital psychiatry he transferred to general practice.

He is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and has been in general medical practice in Congresbury, North Somerset since 1979. He has been a UK Green Party member since about 1977, holding various national offices including Co-Speaker.

Married, with three children, he enjoys gardening, cycling, roller hockey, windsurfing, sand yachting, plays the flute, writes poems, short stories and songs, and is an ex-handglider pilot. He has a number of inventions, chiefly a double film, flexible aerofoil sail which he has been developing steadily for a number of years. He is a Quaker and a member/supporter of numerous socially conscious organizations.

More information can be found at http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/Author.htm / rlawson@gn.apc.org

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update 16 November 2008