I want President Bush to have a dream

like the one that Ebenezer Scrooge had

I want him to be visited by the ghosts of Iraqi children

who cry out, “But mankind was your business”

I want all the Tiny Tims of the world

to get their 401k money back

from the white collar criminals who stole it

I want them to not go to war

for oil, good ratings, or weapon sale quotas

because this white collar mafia is in power

I wish President Bush would have an affair

I wish he’d take off his black pointed cowboy boots

and took at the moon more often

And then I wish he’d wake up

and be inflicted with what Jim Carey had

in the movie “Liar Liar”

I wish all the billboards across the country read:

“Give back the votes your brother stole”

and the poets would shout from every street corner,

“The emperor wears no clothes”

I want his mouth washed out with soap

every time he says “weapons of mass destruction”

and for him to wear a Darth Vadar helmet

if he ever says “the axis of evil” again

I hope President Bush looks out his White House window

when we descend on Washington marching for peace

like hordes of starlings who know their way home

because it is in their nature

I want President Bush to have a dream

like the one that Martin Luther King had

I want him to be visited by the ghosts of King,

John Lennon, Paul Wellstone, and the Kennedys

I want the New York Times to cover the story

when his father scolds him for being a bully

I hope he gets some Gi Joes for Christmas

and starts to play with real toys and not with real people

I think President Bush should go back to school

and look up some words in the dictionary

or study history – like the Roman Empire

I’d like him to write on the blackboard 100 times,

“I will not promote propaganda – or the far right agenda”‘

“I will not join gangs”

I want President Bush to be haunted

by the ghosts of our Founding Fathers

until he learns this lesson:

that killing civilians is a terrorist act

and pre-emptive strike is invasion

I want him to break out in song

at his next Address to the Nation

singing “Give Peace a Chance” is all we are saying

and “We Shall Overcome”

I want President Bush to have an epiphany

or else I want him gone

I want Americans to say “yes” when the polls ask,

“Should regime change begin at home?”

And I want him to stop shouting “Fire!” in the theatre

when he is the one with the matches

I want him to care about children

more than slogans and re-elections

If President Bush doesn’t have a real dream soon

he should step aside for those who do

He should impeach himself

and ask for forgiveness

For imposing his nightmare on the world

—Colleen Redman