Tag Archives: Donald Trump poem

Dumbing Down

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photo from Rolling Stone

Dumbing Down

I bailed on calculus but I excelled at long division.
Illustrious in wood shop, I flunked nuclear fission.
Knights in suits of armor were never quite my thing.
I never learned to play an instrument. I do not sing.

My illustrious school career came by fits and starts.
Loved auto mechanics. Couldn’t hack the arts.
I admit I’m not well-rounded. I studied what I liked,
and after school was over, I skateboarded and biked.

I never was a bookworm. I had no use for culture.
I had no fear of teachers who hovered like a vulture.
A comic book inside a textbook made for pleasant reading.
I only paid attention to what I would be needing.

The same is true now that I’m grown. I skip over the news.
I have no need of knowing  about Arabs, Serbs or Jews.
I fixate on my own needs. I can’t bother with the rest.
I read enough to pay my bills and pass my driver’s test.

What more is necessary? I have TV and my phone.
When I am ensconced in them, the world leaves me alone.
I’m tired of ecology and its boring explaining,
so voted for a president who is more entertaining.

Now that news is comedy, it holds my interest well.
Who believes those scientists who ring the warning bell?
When the air’s too bad to breathe, I’ll simply stay inside
watching news on Stuppid  that is more bona fide.

(Click on the Stuppid URL for a list and description of “fake news” news sources and some of the biggest disinformation posts.  Chilling. )

Prompt words today were bail, division, illustrious and armor.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/rdp-sunday-bail/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/17/fowc-with-fandango-division/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/16/illustrious/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/your-daily-word-prompt-armor-march-17-2019/

Doling out the Punch

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Doling out the Punch

If you construct your paradise at the cost of others—
build it on the suffering of children and of mothers—
do you really think that it is worth the cost
of creating your own heaven on what others may have lost?

You may feign indifference as you sally back and forth,
but do you really think that your soul’s increased its worth?
Do you even think of things like this as you amass
your fortune or is the very core of you this crass?

Heaven can’t be heaven, in fact it’s really wrong
if you don’t want to pull the least of us along
on your pilgrim’s progress toward riches and toward fame.
Life’s composed of more than making wealth a game.

It should be so obvious that it does not need telling
that happiness cannot be found in buying and in selling
so long as what you’re selling is the suffering of another.
Every nationality and race is still your brother.

How can you enjoy  riches and revel in it all
then seek to keep it for yourself by building up a wall,
hoarding all your plenty behind your man-made ridge?
Instead of building fortresses, we should build a bridge.

I know this has been said before, but still I must relate
all of this just one more time to our dense heads of state.
Some of us cannot believe that you have the nerve
to still be insisting that you are there to serve

as you grab all the pie and say there’s not enough
to share with the others because times are so tough.
What’s more, you try to get us to build your wall for you
so you can keep on doing all those shell games that you do,

insisting that we’ll profit by tax cuts for billionaires,
assisting all the bloodsuckers to become zillionaires.
Making up the deficits by cutting our security
and calling it entitlement? We question your maturity!

Are you simply spoiled boys playing with our nation?
Have you made a private playground of your God’s creation?
Do you get to pour the punch, determining the ration?
One percent is what you dole out for our satiation.

While you “one percent” gulp down all the ninety-nine
portions of the elixir that you find mighty fine,
children thirst and suffer. The homeless face the cold.
Have no doubt.  It’s our security that’s being sold!!!!

!

The prompt words today were lost, paradise, indifference and worth.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/rdp-saturday-lost/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/16/fowc-with-fandango-paradise/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/your-daily-word-prompt-indifference-february-16-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/worth/

Reality Show

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Reality Show

In so-called halcyon days of yore,
I fear that label was merely lore.
For some it may have been a joy,
but not so for the hoi polloi.
They stood and watched the royal parade
and knew it for the grand charade
it was, and as the nobles dined—
stuffed and feasted, gorged and wined
on sweet elixirs and joints of beast,
it was famine for the least
of all the people in the land.

The rich, at least, the merry band
depicted in cartoon and book,
but instead by hook or crook,
the rich cavorted as they carved
their empires from the hordes who starved.
They kept unschooled masses naive
hoping they would then believe
God meant for some to eat their fill
while others toiled and paid the bill.

And now it seems it hasn’t changed.
The masses once more are deranged,
and educated fools have been
the ones who vote exploiters in.
They say it’s better for the masses—
all those toiling lads and lasses.
Yet,
when rich men go unregulated,
and untaxed, the poor seem fated
not to get the trickle-down.
Instead the powers grouse and frown
and tax them more. Their minds are fraught
with thoughts of payments on their yacht.

Beware rich men who say they’ll share
and pass their laws because they care.
If they profit by those laws,
the poor will simply not, because
the rich get richer out of greed
to have more and they do not heed
those for whom the laws were meant.
Sharing  they call entitlement.
The reality you think you see
on TV shows is meant to be
mere entertainment. In fact it’s truthless
engineered by those most ruthless
who seek to turn our thought and mind
into an audience for their kind.

They seize our brains, then seize our nation
all the while in sure elation
that they do it for our good.
Oh that they did.  Oh that they would.
But it’s a ruse
we can’t excuse.
The rich man tends to his own riches
while the poor men dig the ditches
for the one who rants and raves.
I fear instead they dig their graves.

 

Today’s prompts are halcyon, cartoon, royal and parade. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/12/17/rdp-monday-halcyon/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/12/17/fowc-with-fandango-cartoon/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/12/17/royal/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/12/17/your-daily-word-prompt-parade-December-17-2018/

Divided We Fall

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Divided We Fall

As we bicker on the web, as we snipe and snooze,
soothing our hurt feelings with doobies or with booze,
our rulers are sequestered, each pondering on his throne,
deciding what new property to seize and make their own.

A chunk from social security, another bit from schools.
So long as we’re not educated, we’ll remain their fools.
Cut taxes for their cronies and let them drill for oil
in our nature preserves until we start to boil.

Record heat in one spot and fires in another.
Record snow and hurricanes. We drown or freeze or smother.
They are not going to notice these travesties and glitches,
for they’re busy in their counting rooms, counting out their riches.

What percentage earned today? What yachts to buy tomorrow?
The fortune that they earn today is mankind’s future sorrow.
If we stay divided, we play into their plans.
We keep each other busy as they work on their tans!

DCIM100MEDIADJI_0002.JPG

The prompt words today were snooze, property, sequester and percentage.
Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/rdp-friday-snooze/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/16/fowc-with-fandango-property/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/sequester/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/your-daily-word-prompt-percentage-November-16-2018/

Stemming the Rage

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Street Mural on wood viewed in Guanajuato

 

Stemming the Rage

To seed grace and stability in these tempestuous times,
try not to retaliate in your tweets and rhymes.
Simply state the truth as you continue to perceive it.
If you do not stir angst you’re less likely to receive it.
Choose not to participate when small minds rant and bray.
Just find a saner audience you’re likelier to sway.
This isn’t always easy. Ghandi led the way,
and he moved the British at the end of day.

Whether Trump or Kim Jong-un, Hitler or Pol Pot 
could be swayed by passive resistance? Perhaps, or perhaps not.
But surely there are other souls—even ones of note
who might be nudged to change their minds and even change their vote.
If you can curb your anger and respond with facts and sanity,
perhaps you’ll find a route to chip away at their inanity.
Please take with a grain of salt this lesson that I preach.
Actually, I must admit, it’s me I’m trying to teach.

 

Word prompts for today were: grace, stability, tempestuous and retaliate. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/rdp-monday-grace/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/10/fowc-with-fandango-stability/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/tempestuous/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/retaliate

If We Listened to the Birds

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.

If We Listened to the Birds

If I were a mighty bird,
fluent in both voice and word,
when the weather shifted colder,
I’d wing myself to royal shoulder,
have a perch and, I confess,
use all the powers I possess
to loosen up and leave my mark
on that stodgy matriarch,
to feel my presence and touch of wings
and know what necessary things
each creature in nature brings with it.
How each thing comes together to fit.

This I would find exhilarating.
By my presence, educating
the powers-that-be to think of nature
as more than just a nomenclature.
Perhaps I’d tell the president
that I have been heaven sent
to tell the powers that abide
that God’s not really on their side.
God would have us guard our earth
There’s more than money that marks its worth.
All of nature, without a doubt,
makes the world of man work out.

If those large personalities
who run our world would only, please,
take heed of what I have to say,
we’d survive to live another day,
another year, another eon.
We’d have a peaceful planet to be on.
The brother eagle that guides their flight
knows too well extinction’s plight.
The symbol there that marks their seal
is anguished over the ordeal
that fellow creatures of nature face
because of loss of living space.

Our national parks sold off for oil,
waters from which fish recoil,
oceans plugged with plastic waste
we idly cast off in our haste.
While politicians rail and bicker,
our society grows sicker.
Hospitals far out of reach,
schools encouraged not to teach
science, but religious fable
that makes the politicians able
to pull the wool over the eyes
of those who believe their disguise.

It’s true that often what we get
is exactly opposite
of what they promise, their rhetoric
stirring us to moods euphoric
when in fact they’re empty words
meant to bilk admiring herds.
Look deeper at what they profess.
They promise more, but give us less.

The prompts for today are bird, royal, exhilarating, possess. Here are the links, in case you want to play along:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/08/rdp-saturday-bird/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/08/fowc-with-fandango-royal/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/08/exhilarating/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/daily-addictions-2018-week-35/possess

When We Let Our Leaders Fail Us

4 Replies

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When We Let Our Leaders Fail Us

Way back in my innocence, I thought the world was fair.
My biggest daily decision was what I chose to wear.
The probability of danger then was very rare.
The world, not yet insidious, was still one I could bear.
I knew I could accomplish all that I would dare.
I didn’t fear the water or anguish o’er the air.
The very thought of fire did not move me to despair.
But as men work to turn the dream of nature to nightmare,
most of those in power do not seem to care,
letting some wreak damage as others simply stare,
mouths open in horror over  the whole affair.
Protestors standing in the street, protestors on the stairs,
poets writing poetry, crouched within their lairs,
looking at what God hath wrought and tearing at their hair.
Will our help come from heaven or approach us through the air,
coming from other galaxies to see how we might fare,
finally making contact not to conquer but to share,
setting down amongst us not to pillage, rape or tear,
but rather as our saviors, bent upon repair.

The prompts today were fair, probability, insidious and approach.  Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/rdp-tuesday-prompt-fair/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/28/fowc-with-fandango-probability/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/insidious/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/daily-addictions-2018-week-34/ approach