Tag Archives: poem about Donald Trump

Peculiar Little Habits

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Peek at the keys spread out on the floor.

Peculiar Little Habits

Peculiar little habits and peculiar little ways
help us pass away the hours and wile away the days.
When you enter in the door, close it exactly twice
to be sure the catch secures as solid as a vice.
Always check the doorknobs before you go to bed
to be sure the deadbolt  is completely dead.
Security is something that can’t be left to chance.
You must man the battlements and take a vigilant stance.
Do not invite strangers to wander through your home.
Give foreign folks and foreign thoughts no further place to roam. 

Seal your borders. Block people who
may be a different color from you.
Be sure that you have set a ban
on each thing unAmerican.
Burn our silks. Wipe out baklava.
While you’re at it, ban our Java.
Set up a refreshment jury
to vote on food like Indian curry.
Wienerschnitzel’s got to go.
Ban sushi. Nix gado gado.

Chocolate should be exorcised.
Ban music that’s unauthorized.
Raga, salsa and jungle beat
are rhythms we should not repeat.
America for Americans
is how we have arranged our plans.
Blood tests mandatory for sure
to make sure our blood is pure.
Send all the dark skins we have banned
to places not so tightly planned:

Prince Edward Island or Mexico
are places they’ll be forced to go—
places less pristine and picky
content to take folks slightly icky,
not perfect folks like you and me,
immaculate in our ancestry.
With endearing little habits, peculiar little ways,
we’ll wile away our hours and wile away our days
waiting for those foreign folks on whom we need to pounce,
doling out our safety by the pound, not by the ounce.

Picking fights with neighbors, casting insults at Korea,
twittering and ranting in a verbal diarrhea.
As it is above, so has it become below—
Trying to regress from what was once the status quo.
Truth becoming what we make it, in spite of evidence—
reinventing science by divine providence
Though we cannot lock out hurricanes or fires caused  by our blindness,
we have power to lock out sanity, ecology and kindness.
We’ll check our country’s doorknobs before we go to bed
and insure that all the deadbolts are completely dead.

 

The prompt word today is peculiar.

“A Little Bird Keeps Tweeting Us!”

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Here’s another wonderful Simon and Garfunkel parody on the subject of Mr. Trump’s Tweetings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SeKnM1lOtA

 

Here is the source website for this.

The Divine Right of Kings

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The Divine Right of Kings
(How Politics Makes for Strange Bedfellows)

I need to know this, Mr. Trump. What world is it that you inhabit
where if you want it, it’s okay for you to reach out and to grab it
and never share with others the wealth that you’ve purloined?
Except, of course, with other rich boys in the clubs you’ve joined?

I need to know this, Mr. Thune. What God gave you the right
to draft a secret health bill that overlooks the plight
of those littlest sparrows God witnessed as they fell?
What soothes your conscience as you now consign them all to Hell?

Mister Ku Klux Klanner, once you remove your hood
and navigate in daylight your well-lit neighborhood,
how do you salve your conscience? The crosses that you’ve burned there
must surely also burn you, once they’re exposed to air.

What happened to those finer parts your mothers saw in you
that might have loved their playmates, be they black, Arab or Jew?
All that innocence and love, surely you must mourn
as you join that beast that crawls toward Bethlehem to be born.

Mr. Jung has taught us that we all have everything within us: light and shadow, male and female, good and evil, cruelty and kindness.  Those parts are not exorcised within us just because we choose not to exercise them. I wonder at the dreams of the seemingly pious souls mentioned in the poem above. Are they as completely sure they are right as they seem to be?  Are their dreams untortured, their consciences squeaky clean?

If you are unsure who John Thune is, he is a senior U.S. senator from South Dakota who grew up the son of a born-again Christian family who happened to live across the street from me.  They broke away from the Methodist Church to form the Community Bible Church, preaching solid Christian values, eschewing the evils of movies and dance and even television.  They unsuccessfully mounted a big campaign to forbid dancing at our school prom and produced a son who now aligns himself with Mr. Trump.  What would Jesus say, Mr. Thune? Would he reaffirm that politics makes for strange bedfellows?

 

Sen. John Thune (R-SD)

What he’s saying: A common complaint about the Affordable Care Act is that the law has caused premiums to spike, and Thune told Fox News this month that South Dakota has seen premiums rise 124% since 2013. The fact that roughly 85% of Obamacare consumers receive premium subsidies to defray these increases has received less attention from critics. The House version of the American Health Care Act would switch Obamacare’s premium assistance to a flat, age-based subsidy, a change that would lower prices for younger, healthier consumers but hit some older, lower income ones with premium increases of more than 800% by 2026, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Biggest donors: At number three and $40,246, Sanford Health is the only healthcare name among the top five donors to Thune’s campaign committee; Nextera Energy comes in first with $52,000 and Blackstone Group is next with $50,097.

 Isn’t it the main idea behind health insurance that those who can pay and who are less likely to become ill cushion the load for those who are the most ill and need it most?

The prompt today was inhabit.

Parsing Warshington

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Translation: “Donald, we are watching you!”  jdb photo, solidarity march, La Manzanilla, MX


Parsing Warshington

Politics became a farce
the year that voting brains were sparse
and we elected that damn narc-
issistic, cretinous horse’s arse!!
It’s clear we couldn’t have chosen warse!!!!

The prompt today was “farce.”

Passing Through

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Passing Through

Do not jostle for your places, for you’re fully in our view.
We have the V.I.P. seats here in your cosmic zoo.
Perhaps you sense our presence, but there’s nothing you can do
to see us for it’s set up so we’re only viewing you.

We see who you turn into each time you’re born anew.
One lifetime you’re a Muslim, and another you’re a Jew—
your choice of birth determined by your placement in the queue.
It’s purely arbitrary which person will be you.

You might become the very thing that now you most eschew,
but there’s no one to object to. There’s no one you can sue,
for the world that you’re reborn to was made by folks like you,
and the life you’ve made for who you’ll be might be a life you’ll rue.

This revelation should not come out of the blue.
It’s one that’s often explained by the mystic or guru.
If you love this lifetime where the cat’s meow is you,
please hold onto your passport, for you’re only passing through.

 

The prompt today is passport.

Life is More Wonderful

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photobyokcforgottenman

Life is More Wonderful

Concentrate on daily things—
the scent of toast perfectly browned,
new sheets gathered from the line,
this morning’s treasures spread on the ground:

a robin’s egg, inventing blue,
left on your doorstep, as though for you.
Seed of sycamore spinning down
to land with precision on your shoe.

Life is more wonderful with what
can come through serendipity;
and once we’re clothed and fed and sheltered,
what’s most valuable is free:

A child’s questing hopeful look
as he searches worlds within a book.
Heartfelt laughter dispelling pain
and friends who will return again.

Pity those for whom success
means piling gold in offshore banks;
whose quest for more will sacrifice
the health of children to buy more tanks.

They’ve gone too far to ever know
how much pain and how much woe
is occasioned by their status quo—
how much unhappiness they’ll sow.

Acceptance of their ignorant greed
will lead us down the path they’ve worn.
They’ll leave our world stripped and bereft,
her wondrous freedoms raped and shorn.

So as they pillage, ruin, and rape
an environment that can’t escape,
be glad that stubborn others insist
that we drive these bullies from our midst.

 

We know too much of the world’s ills
to ever fully feel at peace,
for that safe world that we have known
can not be lived without surcease.

Enjoy your happiness in each thing
that luck or your hard work might bring,
but share these things with everyone
lest all we stand for comes undone.

There is much in life that we
must learn to live with and accept;
but other things that we can change,
and leaders who are more adept

at giving us the basics for our health and happiness:
clean water, schools and health care. Never accept less.
If our quest for fool’s gold destroys what it can’t buy,
we’re simply fools caught building dream castles in the sky.

In times that are distressing,
millions of voices shout,
“To preserve simple pleasures,
drive these carpetbaggers out!”

The prompt today was acceptance. (Not.) The rather unusual use of two rhyme schemes in one poem came about naturally at first, as though some part of me rebelled against even the strictures of the poetic form.  Then it seemed natural to vary the justification as well.  Yes, we need justification, but it need not follow the rules we do not agree with.  So, both center and left justification and next line and alternate line rhyme.  Seemed right for this poem. 

Label Machine

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Label Machine

Pure rayon or crepe de chine?
Trust the labelling machine.
It for sure will have it right
and easily can solve your plight
when you have that puzzling quandary
over what to call your laundry.
It’s easy.  You are simply able
to look inside and read the label.

With people, it is not the same.
Labelling may unfairly blame
someone of a certain hue
for something they would never do.
You may as well class cleft of chin
as a mark of sloth or sin
as to choose one’s place of birth
as a determiner of their worth.

It’s clear we’ve failed our populace
when we see how many of us
trust bigotry and generalization
to determine policies of  nation.
“Give us your tired and your poor”
has been swept right out the door.
The symbol of what’s free and fair
now stands forlorn with empty stare.

Behold: the Statue of Liberty—
a symbol of hypocrisy.

IMG_2238

The prompt today was label, one of those maddeningly short and simple words in the English language that I have had to repeatedly look up to make sure I’ve spelled it correctly.  “Lable” just looks right to me!!!!

Slurry with the Fringe on Top

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Slurry with the Fringe on Top

Can’t you see it, my fine sir?
Your life is one long racial slur,
combined with the disdain you feel
for a fine calf in a high heel.
You rail and sputter, rage and roar
until your scorn becomes a bore.
A petulant and spoiled child,
you bring out what is dark and wild
in those you seek to represent,
’til all of us are madness bent.

Others seek to stem the tide.
They match your vain despotic pride
with reason, kindness, calls for peace.
On their calm waters, you float like grease.
How can our country have sunk this low?
We’re  pulled out by your undertow.
We struggle here, in sight of land
where calm  and justice have been banned.

You are the antithesis to reason.
Charged with infamy and treason,
you simply hold a mirror to 
the truth and say it isn’t you!
Slinging charges wild and truthless,
you show your nature: vain and ruthless.
You pollute our rivers, offend our friends.
The harm you do just never ends.

The principles of our constitution
cry out for their restitution.
These shores that welcomed your family
call out for equality.
Those rights women have fairly won
are not yet ready to be done.
WE THE PEOPLE seek to be heard.
We’re tired of actions we find absurd.
In place of your outrageous gall,
we seek your silence once and for all!

The prompt today was slur.

 

Rhythm Method

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(The poem I’ve written below is based on the “Five Principles for Getting through the Trump Years,” given by Alice Walker in her speech at a reading in La Manzanilla, Mexico two nights ago on February 20, 2017. I was fortunate enough to be at that reading where she and four other excellent writers also talked about subjugation, prejudice, inequality, poverty and the importance of kindness, open-mindedness, acceptance and education in bringing our country to a better level of fairness to all.  I’ll talk about some of the other poets and storytellers who told their tales in a later post; but for today, and since it fit in with today’s prompt, here is my take on Ms. Walker’s wonderful talk.)

Rhythm Method

You’ve got to listen to the beat.
Shake your booty, pound your feet.
If you want to survive the day,
the rhythm method is the way.
It’s been said by smarter folks than I
that it’s the way that we’ll get by
in times we think we won’t survive—
the way we stay fully alive
in spite of voters who were hazy
and voted in a man who’s crazy.

Instead of listening to his bleat,
until the time of his defeat,
first and foremost, kindness will
help us to swallow this bitter pill.
A close connection with nature might
help us stay strong in the fight.
Respect for all those elders who
just might be another hue:

native tribes or Africans
brought unwillingly as hands
to shore up our economy
and build a country for you and me
while they paid the awful fee
in poverty and slavery.
It’s time to set our people free!

Gratitude for human life,
both theirs and ours, will allay strife.
In times like these, less than enhancing,
“Hard times demand furious dancing!”
One wiser and more in the groove
than I am, says that we must “Move!”
James Cleveland sang “This too shall pass,”
Turn on his music and move your ass.

Thousands of people dance along
this wonderful old gospel song
in her mind’s eye and I agree.
While we are waiting, you and me,
for enough others to see the light
and step in line to wage the fight,
we have to keep the joy in us
in spite of this unholy fuss
that seeks to keep us frightened and
prisoners in our native land.

Instead of knives and swords and guns,
defeat the tyrant with jokes and puns.
Comedians will save the day
and keep us laughing on the way.
But in the mean time, move your feet.
Feel the rhythm. Feel the beat.
If this nation has a chance,
perhaps we’ll find it in the dance.

The quotations above are all from Alice Walker’s talk. In prose form, here again are her five principles for getting through the Trump years (or hopefully, months.)

1. Kindness, which can keep us going through these unkind times.

2. A close connection with nature.

3. Respect for our oldest biological ancestors including native Americans (specifically those at Standing Rock), Africans  (who survived the fierce physical brutality of slavery) and Europeans such as John Brown and Susan B. Anthony.

4.  ‘Move!  Hard times demand furious dancing.’ Reverend James Cleveland sang, “This too shall pass.”  Get a recording of it and dance to it! She has an image of thousands of people dancing to this wonderful gospel song.

5. Maintain gratitude for human life.

She ended by relating the importance of meditation, which she described as a means “to rediscover the blue sky that is our mind,” and by stating that one way we can overcome the constant bad news with which our oppressors drug us is to learn the bad news first from comedians. This, perhaps, is one way for us to get through this dark period in our history.

The prompt today was rhythmic.

Creative Pronunciation

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Creative Pronunciation

“I’m serial,” he used to say,
a child with lips stretched tight
and fists clenched in earnestness;
and then,”How ruve!” when we laughed.

His vocabulary was sophisticated
for a child of eight,
and yet childish in its imprecision.
One letter switched, or three,
can bring about the opposite of the effect intended.
“Possumbly” can put one’s whole argument
into question. “I mean maybe!”
make one’s firmest assertions laughable.

How staunchly we defend
the walls around our words, as though
corralling  them controls the world.
And yet we have so little control
over potentates
who bend them to their will.

Though we may know the sound of words,
we do not always know the truth of them.
Some trust the word itself to proclaim truth
despite the facts. Thus do certain words
seem to carry a power of their own. Religion.
Country. Safety. Patriotism. No matter what the deed,
declare it in defense of one of these,
and there are those who will believe you to speak truth.

There are those
who have the power of making words march
straight ahead in noble order while their truth lies low in camouflage.
We are so accustomed to what parades as reality
that we believe these staunch maneuverings,
listened to like an old radio play
or its newest replacement, the reality show.

They entertain us with the sound if not the depth of what they say:
creative pronouncements, slogans, sputterings,
until the truth of words dies out
and they are shells of words,
scattered upon the beach
for our collection,
put upon a shelf just for display.

Their center gone, they join an empty world
devoid of air and life.
No water to drink.
No meat of words to chew on.
Thus is the power of words
to feed us or to strip us of our world.
A child’s innocent mispronouncements,
or the false pronouncements of a fool.

The prompt today was seriousness.