maybe now,
we can all agree
to give the bible a break
it’s been thumped so hard,
so long
it’s like that kid at school,
you know,
the one with the permanent flinch.
More Thoughts about Roy Moore
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Category Archives: donald trump
Talkin’ about Roy Moore
lt’s been a sordid year
a tawdry year
a year of constant sleaze
each new low
trumping the old low
with evangelical zeal
but we’ve finally hit rock bottom
we’ve finally hit the floor
I’m talkin’ about
I’m talkin’ about
I’m talkin’ about Roy Moore.
Two Poems by Jim Feeney
The Fallen (2017)
1
Goodbye Reince Priebus
no longer will I contemplate
the strange music of your name –
those slender vowels reversing,
no longer will I look for meanings, explanations –
Reince?
A salve to be applied sparingly to a wound?
Put some Reince on that cut, son!
a rinse? a douche? a poultice?
and Priebus?
Latinate portliness – a Shakespearean character,
a writ to slap someone with- Habeas Priebus,
or a complicated skateboard manouevre:
He executed a perfect reverse Priebus!
Reince, it’s been a slice.
2
Scaramucci, Scaramucci,
will you do the fandango?
Anthony, we hardly knew you,
but thanks for letting us know
about Steve Bannon
and his auto-fellatio.
3
Alas, poor Stephen,
abandoned
like a rumpled sofa.
On Reflection…. Donald Trump
America has given birth
to a giant orange child
a zaftig infant Gulliver
striding the ravaged earth
of his own imagination
trampling whole villages
swallowing…
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2 Poems Up at Oddball Magazine ( The Fallen (2017) and On Reflection – Donald Trump)
These poems are part of Oddball Magazine’s lead in to the anniversary of Election Day 2016. Versions of the poems have appeared previously on this blog, although the first poem is radically different than the blog poem.
Check them out here.
Post-Election Rag (redux)
This poem was written earlier in the year, but it is still , I think, depressingly relevant. It also appeared with 4 other poems in the online magazine Anti-Heroin Chic
Post-Election Rag
(Walk that back
walk that back
I know I said it
but I walked that back.)
Attack dog surrogates
inveterate invertebrates
re-stock the swamp
with old white males.
Post logic, post truth
snake oil and kool-aid
re-stock the swamp
with old white males.
Post Obamacare,
post pussy-gate, post gator aid
re-stock the swamp
with old white males
Inveterate surrogates
attack dog invertebrates
re-mail the stock
to the old white swamp
re-stock the swamp
with old white males.
Diatribal (Donald Trump at the United Nations)
America has given birth
to a giant orange child
a zaftig infant Gulliver
striding the ravaged earth
of his own imagination
trampling whole villages
swallowing villagers whole.
Texts from the Underworld
he can’t quite remember when they started –
the text messages direct to his head,
actual text messages
appearing on the screen of his brain
preceded by a ping;
they were innocuous at first
quasi-inspirational stuff like:
ping! write like no one is reading;
ping! own the day, it cost you nothing.
Then they became fragmented
like someone was trigger happy
on the ‘send’ button:
ping! America, the country
ping! that God is asked to bless
ping! is hurtling down
ping! a golden garbage chute
ping! that goes all the way
ping! to hell!
Then, nothing for a while.
Then, one message repeating
its sneer implicit in its abbreviation
its adopted argot,
over and over again
a non-stop textual assault:
ping! Dems got no game
ping! Dems got no game
ping! Dems got no game….
Photo: Detail from fresco inside the Camposanto, Pisa, Italy
Bones Of Contention
Bones of Contention
Bones to pick.
Barrack Obama pardons Chelsea Manning.
Donald Trump pardons Joe Arpaio.
Is there moral equivalence here?
The Trump surrogate on CNN thinks so
but there are no metrics to measure by
so the discussions drag on and on
and the screen splits into two heads
and the screen splits into four heads
and the screen splits into eight heads
a pundit arrives
a pundit leaves
a pundit gets indignant
a pundit gets emotional
a pundit gets that gotcha smirk
there is talk of smoke and fire
there not been one without the other
and I see this distraction of pundits
this deflection of pundits
this confusion of pundits
standing looking at the horizon
across an open plain,
oblivious, while behind them
Rome burns.
Charlottesville
they came out of the woods
without their hoods
Trump spawn
hatred walking,
to Kall them Klueless
would be too Kind.
Alternate Take – Goodbye Reince Priebus (with apologies to Queen)
Goodbye Reince Preibus
I’m sorry you had to go
now we are left with Bannon
and his auto fellatio
Scaramucci, Scaramucci
will you do the fandango.
I have been fascinated by the name “Reince Preibus” since I first heard it, the chainsaw screech of “Reince”, the Latinate portliness of “Preibus”.
Reince: There is something otherworldly, foreign about those slender vowels “ei” before the “nce”. The “ince” part is fairly common – wince, mince, convince- and even the Germanic sounding “ein” is common enough -skein, stein – but “eince” is something else, a chainsaw screech but modified as if heard through ear muffs. There is also something medicinal about it – a salve to be applied sparingly (put some reince on that cut, son).
Then “Priebus” takes the “ei” and reverses them (pronounced to rhyme with “Brie”). It has a Latinate portliness, like a Shakespearean character, or a writ to slap someone with- “Habeas Priebus”; or a complicated skateboard manoeuvre – he executed a perfect reverse Priebus.
Yes, the Trump administration is a treasure trove of assonance, dissonance and onomatopoeia. The man himself sounds like a heavy landing, a cross between “rump” and “triumph”. “Jared Kushner” is the sound of something nasty being squelched underfoot and Melania and Ivanka with their Eastern European aura put the “ass” back in “assonance” (sorry about that one).
Goodbye Reince Priebus(with apologies to Queen)
Goodbye Reince Preibus
no more will I contemplate
the strange music of your name
those slender vowels reversing
no longer will I look for meanings, explanations
Reince? A salve to be applied
sparingly to a wound?
a rinse? a douche? a poultice?
and Priebus? A complicated procedure?
Last night, doctors performed
an emergency preibus
the patient is doing well.
Goodbye Reince Preibus
I’m sorry to see you go
now we are left with Steve Bannon
and his auto fellatio
Scaramucci, Scaramucci
will you do the fandango.
It’s Not Easy Being Mike Pence
When I look at Mike Pence
I think of H.L.Mencken
who once said
that Puritanism
is “the haunting fear
that someone, somewhere
might be happy”.
Haiku for Donald
petulant pillock
curmudgeon with a cudgel
bombastic buffoon.
Haiku Extracted from the Previous Post
high fives and fist bumps
haircuts just like Eric Trump’s
brodacious banter
Fareed Zakaria is Stealing my Stuff
I was watching Fareed Zakaria and Don Lemon on CNN last Friday night; they were trying to make sense of the ongoing tragic farce that is the Trump White House and Don Lemon posed a question which could be summarised as follows : “Is Donald Trump crazy like a fox or crazy like a fool”. It was clear that Fareed thinks that the needle has been stuck on ‘fool’ for quite some time. At one point, he says to Don something like “look, you have to understand that Donald Trump is a performance artist.” This sounded familiar to me, so I looked back through my blog posts and there it was in a poem I published on Reuben Wooley’s website :’I am not a Silent Poet” back in January 2016. Here’s the poem, but please click on the link above and check out Reuben’s excellent site.
Trumped
I get it now
Donald T
Is a performance artist
Like that guy in Beijing
Sucking dust out of the air
With a vacuum cleaner
Or maybe he’s
one of those mirrors
In a fairy tale
Reflecting only
The worst in ourselves.
Fareed, I’m waiting to hear from you.
Agent Orange has a Dark Moment
Agent Orange has a Dark Moment
Do you know who I miss? Jeb Bush. I miss Jeb Bush. He was my first. When I hit him with that low energy jibe and he fell apart and all the Bush family could not put Humpty together again, I knew I was on to something. Then Little Marco and Lyin’ Ted, I miss them too. But most of all, I miss Hillary, Crooked Hillary. Man, she was tough, had me on the ropes. It took Comey and Vlad, that pointy headed villain, to get me back on my feet. I was nearly out for the count, which might not have been a bad thing. Who needs this shit! I should give Vlad a call, I’m a bit worried -there’s no such thing as a free hack.
Reince Priebus – what kind of fucking name is that? It sounds like bad news from the doctor. “I’m sorry, Donald, you have a Reince Priebus on your rectum and it doesn’t look good”. Ha, I just made myself laugh. And Bannon, I’ve seen sofas on the side of the road in better shape than that rumpled fucker. Spice Box? Hardest job in the world – explaining the unexplainable. That Melissa Mc.Carthy just slays me. How come all the cool people are on the other side? Who have I got? Ryan and Pence? Bland and Blander? Where did Pence come from anyway with his brush cut and his antediluvian politics? The best surgeons in the world couldn’t remove the poker from that guy’s ass. Antediluvian, you didn’t expect that did you?
Talking of cool, I should give Barack a call, ask him down to Florida for a game of golf; check his birth certificate again (Joking! How I miss those days). Man, I hate this fucking White House furniture, is it Friday yet?
Point of View/ The Arc of Agent Orange
The Arc of Agent Orange
I
And so we
spin from one
spin to the
next; things I
said, I did
not mean; things
I meant, I
did not say.
Stand by for Greatness
Stand by for Greatness
Stand by for Greatness
II
Success can
be measured,
The toys have
left the pram.
Stand by for Greatness
Stand by for Greatness
Stand by for Greatness
Donald’s Early Days
Donald’s Early Days
A farrago of fiascoes,
banishments and bans;
weekends at Mar-A-Lago
the world in his hands.
I thought I would update this one for dVerse’s open link Thursday ( I know, it’s Friday). Even though it was written in the early day’s of the stopdraggingthepanda.com/2018/09/06/the-toddler-king-parts-12-and-3/reign, I think unfortunately it still applies.
Out like Flynn
They would have pilloried Hillary
if she had a discussion with a Russian.
American Carnage
American Carnage
Not the export it used to be,
nothing like the glory days
Hiroshima, Vietnam, Cambodia;
still popular at home tho’
nearly twelve thousand gun deaths a year
the gun barrel points both ways.
This is not much of a poem, is it?
That last metaphor was a bit clumsy
and there’s no music in statistics
but there is a rhyme in that last line
and there’s assonance in ‘American Carnage’
and there is an ass in the White House
but enough about that
stay away from the low hanging fruit
we need a rhyme
carnage, baggage, garbage, image
imagine all the people
that’s what this situation needs
a protest singer, a protest song
three chords and a chorus
that we can sway and link arms to
Where are you
Josh (Ritter)
Michael (Stipe)
Bruce ?
Inauguration
Inauguration
it
does
not
augur
well.
Photos: Orange is the New Bleak 1 &2
Book Titles
Book Titles
The Art of the Deal
The Art of the Grope
The Art of Chaos
The Art of False Hope.
Just when I thought I had nothing more to say about Donald Trump – a mongrel haiku, that adheres to the syllable count but not the spirit.
Oh Donald is it
policy or is it just
pandermonium.
This is the first in a series of poems called “Poems with titles longer than the poem itself.”
The Trump Collection (5 poems)
Well, despite the best efforts of a clown car of cartoon contestants and the ridicule heaped on him by John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Bill Maher, Samantha Bee and all those late night satirists, Donald Trump is about to win the Republican Party nomination; he is about to become the winner he has always claimed to be. Time to review this blog’s vain efforts to stop this behemoth. Here they are in order of appearance, as they move from ridicule to outrage to reflection to fear and finally an appeal to a higher power.
Donald Trump (a slimverse)
Donald T
court jester
hair today
tomorrow?
The Level of Discourse
I want to say a few words
About the level of discourse
How low can it go?
How low can it go
When a candidate for the presidency
Of the United States
Gets up on television
And mocks, mimics, ridicules
A disabled man
And the media endlessly debate
Whether he intended to or not
When he plainly did
And the members of his party
Refuse to criticize him
Refuse to say that
This is beneath our dignity,
Perhaps dignity
Has left the room
Has left the United States of America,
And these same party members
Pride themselves
On their rugged individualism
Their boots on the ground machismo
And oh how they love their Hitler analogies
But when a trumped up
Pumped up tin pot bully
Emerges from their own ranks
They are too chickenshit to say anything
How low can it go?
The level of discourse
How low can it go?
Trumped
I get it now
Donald T
Is a performance artist
Like that guy in Beijing
Sucking dust out of the air
With a vacuum cleaner
Or maybe he’s one of those mirrors
In a fairy tale
Reflecting only
The worst in ourselves.
The above poem also appeared on https://iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/trumped-by-jim-feeney/
Watching the Republican Debates
potus
poultice
poultry
poetry
podcast
pomegranate
pornography
porridge
pork
only
one
of
the
above
is
a
lethal
weapon
when
given
to
a
fool
Super Saturday
There’s a dog wearing a tartan skirt
outside the window of Starbuck’s;
a tartan skirt, a belt, and a knitted white sweater.
Its little dog legs are moving furiously
on the wet pavement,
across the slick road
and the sodden green park
the ocean sits
like a slab of lead
having clearly decided
to take some time off,
no crashing on the shore today.
South of the border
A bigoted bully with a head
like a bloated turnip
is moving towards
the presidency of the United States,
and God, once again,
is moving in mysterious ways
but I, for one, wish he would knock it off,
enough already with the mystery
for once in your eternal life,
clarify something,
I mean, for Chrissakes,
there’s a dog wearing a tartan skirt
outside the window of Starbuck’s.
There you go, the poetry’s a bit rough and ready but that goes with the territory. That’s probably enough about Donald for a while. It’s hard to argue logically against statements that have no logic to begin, against policy that doesn’t exist except as cynical manipulation but most of all I can’t get interested. He’s had his twenty minutes. I’m bored. I’m bored with Donald. I’m bored with the people who believe what he says. Little Marco is gone, lyin’ Ted is gone and we are left with boring Donald (#boringdonald). Until I get irritated again………
Watching the Republican Debate
potus
poultice
poultry
poetry
podcast
pomegranate
pornography
porridge
pork
only
one
of
the
above
is
a
lethal
weapon
when
given
to
a
fool
Stopdraggingthepanda 