47th President Poem: Jester and King, by Mark McHugh

Face grizzled, features set
in predictable patterns
of scowl and machismo.

Bronzer or spray tan awkwardly
brighten his cragged face.
He is all danger and dynamo,

brawn and buffoonery.
He walks stiffly and sternly,
comically serious, to the podiums

where he presides as both
jester and king. We know the drill:
Bloviating rants invoke the crank and cackle

of rural boomers suddenly rapt
in the cheap thrill of a rich man’s
blustery one-liners.

He is a conductor who tunes
to the reflexes of his orchestra,
reading their rage, raising

their pitch just as he strikes a chord.
It’s an ear-splitting, repulsive sound.
There is no symphony, no melody,

nothing that anyone might consider
legitimately musical. And yet.
A 78-year old felon’s awkward, fist-pumping

sway to YMCA has reached NFL endzones
which just months ago were backdropped
by Black Lives Matter billboards.

The wealthiest man in the world
leaps like a schizophrenic deer
as he’s invited on stage.

The world’s most popular podcaster
welcomes him to an audience of 70 million
without challenging a single fallacy.

And 77 million freedom-loving Americans
say, Yes. This guy. Again.
Because fuck it.

Is it the thrilling, dual embrace
of tyranny and comedy?
Is it the backlash

to a perceived condescension?
Is it a phone-fomented addiction
to drama?

Or is it perhaps the fact
that a system whose success
is supposedly the envy of the world

has suppressed and stunted
the ones who from the start
knew only struggle?

Is it that the dream
is but a dream
or that life is merry

only for money-movers
and shareholders?
May we hold these truths

to be self-evident:
We were conned well before
this clown-king came around;

duped dirty by a California dream
that America could once again be great,
as in – 😉 –

and that the juice from the fruits
at the top of the tree
would find their way to the tongues

of everyone else.
A slow drip.
Or so says the gaping mouth

of the graph we’ve come to know.
The one Occupy and social media
and Bernie showed us,

the mouth that widens year after year,
waiting to be quenched
before its jaws break

and all data points blast into
a welter of cosmic debris
in whose criss-cross chaos

all collective structure breaks.
Too much? I’ll tone down
the abstract hyperbole

with something more concrete.
A convicted felon/sexual predator
tried to overthrow American democracy.

Then, America democratically
elected him President.
There we are, grounded in reality.

Under the shade
of the distant canopy,
his sycophants throw rocks

at the targets he marks
by playing Pin the Tail on the
Donkey. Who will teach them –

us – how to cut down
the stupid fucking trees?