Doctor now I can confess it to you as the end is near
And there is no one not even my children to care
That I see Nixon as if it were tomorrow
Plain as day he smiles his false smile he is desperate vulnerable and weak
His frightened eyes small his airplane hairline
All that he is, his ideas, frozen into his jowls and twitching lips
His suit is blue, his tie maroon, his sad pets stand by his side
Under the penetrating lights that draw the forehead drenched
And toward which he is inexorably fastened
He appears to me as myself watching myself on a screen in the dark
The story unfolding repeatedly bundled with tangling cords
And spun out to the sound of screaming careening overhead jets
These are meals and you always appear to have your choice of cuisines
But necessity is the marching orders that come from on high
I seem to be always awaiting them and at the same time following
Things don’t get any better and Nixon speaks his denials and rationalizations
His bitter expressions of defeat and persecution
In charge and inflamed as we both spin down
This poem appears in Facture 2: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Special Section: Poetry and Spirit (2001).