George Bush & The Reverse Midas Touch

I don’t know when it exactly happened a friend of mine said the other day. It could have been when George was using coke. It could have been when he was drunk and urinating out the car door in Houston. It might have been over rumors of Robin having his child’s abortion. It might have been over how to win politically, but George cut a deal that would have made Faust proud. I know you are going to say it can’t be. I know you are going to say there is no way, but consider the circumstances and realize the cause and effect, my friend said, and I have. Thus was born Presdent Faustus with all appologies to Christopher Marlowe and Hugo Chavis. President Faustus with not the ability to as Midas turn things to gold, but the reverse Midas Touch, the ability to turn then to shit.

The Tragic History of President Faustus

Enter Chorus.
Not marching now in fields of Baghdad,Where Shiites did mate with the Sunnis,Not stopping in the defense of wisdom,Would be in courts of Kings where state is overturned,Not in the pomp of proud audacious deeds,Intends our Muse to start his unheavenly verse:Only this, (gentlemen: we must perform,The form of Faustus' fortunes good or bad.To patient Judgments we appeal our verdict,And speak for Faustus in his infancy.Now is he borne, his parents base of upper-stock,In Connecticut, within a town called New Haven:Of riper years to West Texas he went,Whereas his kinsmen chiefly brought him up;So soon he profits in oil and rugby,The fruitful past of skulls and bones disgraced,That shortly he was graced with politician’s name,Excelling none, whose smell delights noneIn unheavenly matters of theology,Until swollen with cunning of a self deceit,No waxen wings did mount above his reach,And, wishing, heaven conspired his overthrow;For falling to a devilish exercise,And glutted more with learning's golden gifts,He surfeits upon cursed necromancy.Nothing so sweet as magic is to himthat he prefers before his putrid boast.Yet this man that in his study sits.

. Sc. 1 Enter President Faustus in his Office.

Faustus
Settle your studies, President Faustus, and beginTo bound the depth of that you will confess;Having claimed to be divine in show,Yet evil at the end of every art,And live and die in Isaiah’s works.Sweet Apocalypse 'tis thou has ravished me:

Is, to dispute well, Logic's chief’s end?Affords this Art no greater miracle?Then read no more, thou has attained the end;A greater subject fittest Faustus' wit.Bid Oncaymaeon farewell; Galen come:Seeing, Ubi desinit philosophus, ibi incipit medicus,Be a physician Faustus, heap up gold,And be eternized for some wondrous cure.Summum bonum medicinae sanitas:The end of physic is our bodies health.Why, Faustus, have thou not attained that end?Is not thy common talk sound aphorisms?Are not thy bills hung up as monuments,Whereby whole cities have escaped the plague,And thousand desperate maladies been eased?Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man.Wouldst thou make man to live eternally?Or, being dead, raise them to life again?

Then this profession was to be esteemed.Physic farewell. Where is Justinian?Si una eademque res legatur duobus,Alter rem alter valorem rei, &c.A pretty case of paltry legacies:Exhaereditari filium non potest pater nisi, &c.Such is the subject of the instituteand universal body of the Church.His study fits a mercenary drudge,Who aims at nothing but external trash,The devil and illiberal for me :When all is done, divinity is best;Jerome's Bible, Faustus, view it well:Stipendium peccati mors est.

Ha! Stipendium, &c.The reward of sin is death: that's hard.Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, & nulla est in nobis veritas.:If we say that we have no sin,We deceive our selves, and there's no truth in us.Why then belike we must sin,And so consequently die.Ay, we must die an everlasting death.What doctrine call you this, Che sera, sera,:What will be, shall be? Divinity, adieu.These Metaphysics of Magicians,And Necromantic books are heavenly;Lines, circles, scenes, letters and characters,Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.

O what a world of profit and delight,Of power, of honor, of omnipotenceIs promised to the studious artisan?All things that move between the quiet polesshall be at my command. Emperors and Kings,Are but obeyed in their several provinces:Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the clouds;But his dominion that exceeds in this,Stretched as far as doth the mind of man.A sound magician is a mighty god:Here Faustus try thy brains to gain a deity.Enter Wagner. Wagner, commend me to my dearest friends,The German Rove, and Cheney;Request them earnestly to visit me.WagnerI will sir. exit. FaustusTheir conference will be a greater help to me,Than all my labors, plod I ne'er so fast.Enter the Good Angel and the Evil Angel. Good. AngelO Faustus, lay that damned book aside,And gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul,And heap Gods heavy wrath upon thy head,Read, read the scriptures, that is blasphemy.Evil Angel

Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art,Wherein all nature's treasury is contained:Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,Lord and commander of these elements. Exeunt. FaustusHow am I glutted with conceit of this?Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,Resolve me of all ambiguities,Perform what desperate enterprise I will?

I'll have them fly to India for gold,Ransack the Ocean for orient pearl,And search all corners of the new found worldFor pleasant fruits and princely delicates;I'll have them read me strange philosophy,And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;I'll have them wall all Germany with brass,And make swift Rhine circle faire Wertenberg;I'll have them fill the public schools with silk,Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,And reign sole king of all our provinces;Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war,Then was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge,I'll make my servile spirits to invent.

Come, German Rove and Cheney,And make me blest with your sage conference.
Rove, sweet Rove, and Cheney,

Enter Rove and Cheney.
Know that your words have won me at the last,To practice magic and concealed arts:Yet not your words only, but mine own fantasy,That will receive no object for my head,But ruminates on necromantic skill.Philosophy is odious and obscure,Both law and physic are for petty wits;Divinity is basest of the three,Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible and vile,Until magic, magic that hath ravished Mephistopheles,Then, gentle friends, aide me in this attempt.And I that have with concise syllogismsGravel’s the pastors of the German church,And made the flowering pride of WertenbergSwarm to my problems, as the infernal spirits,On sweet Museums when he came to hell,Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,Whose shadows made all Europe honor him.

Rove
Faustus, these books thy wit and our experienceShall make all nations to canonize us:As Indian Mores obey their Spanish Lords,So shall the subjects of every elementBe always serviceable to us three,Like lions shall they guard us when we please,Like Almaine rutters with their horsemen's staves,Or Lapland giants trotting by our sides;Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids,Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows,Than in their white breasts of the queen of love,For Venice shall they drag huge Argoces,And from America the golden fleece,That yearly stuffs old Philips treasury,If learned Faustus will be resolute.

Faustus
Rove as resolute am I in thisAs thou to live; therefore object it not.

Cheney
The miracles that magic will perform,Will make thee vow to study nothing else,He that is grounded in Astrology,Enriched with tongues, well seen in minerals,Hath all the principles magic doth require.Then doubt not, (Faustus, but to be renowned,And more frequented for this mystery,Then heretofore the Delphian Oracle.The spirits tell me they can dry the sea,And fetch the treasure of all foreign wracks,Ay, all the wealth that our forefathers hidWithin the massy entrails of the earth.Then tell me, Faustus, what shall we three want?

Faustus
Nothing,

Cheney;
O this cheers my soul.Come show me some demonstrations magical,That I may conjure in some lusty grove,And have these joys in full possession.

Rove
Then haste thee to some solitary grove,And bear wise Bacon's and Albanus' works,The Hebrew Psalter, and New Testament,And whatsoever else is requisiteWe will inform thee ere our conference cease.

Cheney

Rove, first let him know the words of art;And then, all other ceremonies learned,Faustus may try his cunning by himself.RoveFirst I'll instruct thee in the rudiments.And then wilt thou be perfected than I.FaustusThen come and dine with me, and after meat,We'll canvas every lucidity thereof,For ere I sleep I'll try what I can do; This night I'll conjure though I die therefore.

Exeunt.