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Salazar in stone.
    Salazar’s slogan for Portugal was “Proudly alone,”
    My kind of dictator.
    He wanted a grand hotel in Lisbon
    And arranged to have one.
    I consider that admirable.
    It’s all downhill
    From the hotel.
    You walk downhill all day
    On the Avenida de la Libertad and never lose your way.
    You end up at the harbor. Obrigado.
    And it’s off in a cab to Brasileira, the café in Chiado
    Where Fernando Pessoa spent so much time writing his immortal
    Multiple-personality-disorder poems,
    Now called Dissociated Identity Disorder.
    That’s where you find the statue.
    That’s where you pay homage.
    He sits at a little bronze table outdoors
    At the edge of the busy café tables, having an espresso
    Made of bronze.
    There is a chair next to his as part of the statue
    So you can be photographed sitting next to him by someone.
    I weep when we meet.
    We bow deeply to each other.
    His eyes mist over.
    It is fate.
    Tomorrow is Election Day 2008.
    I’ll fly nonstop Lisboa to Obama.
    Really, the worst were the Portuguese.
    But does it really make sense to talk about better and worse? Please!
    In sixteenth-century Portugal, there were thirty-two thousand African slaves.
    They came overseas in waves.
    They sailed over in their graves.
    It comes over me in waves.
    They died and went on living. At Cabo de São Vicente, the black Atlantic
    Spanks the gruesome cliff at the outer edge of Europe and gets sick,
    Throwing up white.
    The white is made of night.
    The wrath fucks froth against the cliff.
    Waterboarding makes the cliff stiff.
    I voted for Obama and I ask Obama if.
    Yes we can. I ask Pessoa.
    I ask Lisboa. Did they know about the Shoah?
    Yes we can.
    We can do anything known to man.
    It’s heaven up there above the sky.
    It’s heaven down here, too.
    I got to heaven without having to die.
    It was a near-death experience with Bush 43. Phew.
    But meanwhile the economy. So what are we going to do?
    We’re going to get through.
    It’s heaven up there above the sky.
    Hey, it’s heaven down here, too.
    I love the future I won’t live to see. I don’t know why.
    And don’t even know if it’s true.
    Maybe I’ve already lived to see the future.
    My multiple personalities climb to altitude on a single pair of wings.
    Luxury Man rises to the top and Evening Man brings
    To the podium the first African-American president to sing fado,
    Chicago fado dado didi dado. Obrigado.
    Please fasten your seat belts for takeoff, we’re beginning our descent.
    That isn’t what I meant.
    That long-ago Inauguration Day,
    In a bitter cold Washington, D.C.,
    The slender prince spoke without a hat or coat, elegance, eloquence.
    His death in Dallas practically the next day was intense.
    That’s how the poem began.
    It’s time to leave the poem behind.
    People saw a god trying to be a man.
    People want to be blinded, to be blind.
    The tragedy of Kennedy
    Decanted me.
    Beautiful things that go fast have enchanted me,
    But it’s time to leave Jack Kennedy and my motorcycles behind.
    It is time to attend a new Inauguration.
    It’s checkout time at the Ritz in Lisbon.
    The bill will be considerable.
    I drank tons of their best port in my Baby Mussolini Suite.
    I’m inside a seat belt on a plane. It’s time to vote for victory over defeat.
    Sieg Heil!
    I said that to make you smile.
    But you’re not smiling.
    (Why aren’t you smiling?)
    I said that to put you to sleep,
    But you’re Sieg Heiling.
    I want to put you to sleep.
    I think I’m falling asleep and I have a dream.
    And everyone, come on everyone,
    Come gather at the Lincoln Memorial!
    Come together now! All together now!
    And there is a woman singing.
    I’ve fallen asleep in front of the set
    And the vote keeps coming in
    And millions of people are on the Mall.
    And it is bitter cold.
    And hopes are soaring! In the bitter cold they’re ecstatically ignoring!
    I face a