Elegy for Barbara Bush

Never speak ill of the dead,
there's stupidity in that ditty,
for we speak ill of
James Earl Ray and Lee Harvey Oswald
and Jeffrey Dahmer
and Hitler and Mussolini
and Stalin and murderers galore we vilify
and gloat that they are dead
but we are told we must be respectful of the dead
at least that it's not proper
to denigrate one until his/her body is cold
and the body is given time to molder
especially if the body is that of Barbara Bush
because she raised, in her lifetime,
a hundred million dollars for literacy and books
and she loved her brood of children
and she had a love affair with her man
for years uncounted
we must venerate her with our silence
for her life snuffed
but here's what I think about dear BB,
whose words often sounded like they were shot
out of a BB--

Too late,
the damage has been done,
blood courses in the Euphrates and the Tigris
civil wars most uncivil have been earned
and never will be won
as Bush the Younger BB's child
paints his domesticated dogs
the feral dogs of war he unleashed
run amok over the carnage
in the Middle East.
And remember Barbara Bush
it is who famously said after Katrina
that the Houston Astrodome
was an improvement over their homes
for the underprivileged displaced of Louisiana
and now we celebrate this rich and useless Pollyanna
because she's dead,
spare me the praises heaped, the "rest in peace"
and the tears shed.

Usha Nellore