Author: poetryfest

Bump the Trump.
You’re the chump.
(Or is it chimp?) for Trump.

Not just a few or a bunch but a large clump for Trump
All sticking together,
Yet highly untethered.

Why not just dump Trump?
He’s a frump
that Trump
with a hanging tie
like a hanging chad
rigged.

A grump, that Trump.
Not a Forest Gump,
That Trump.

He’ll always hump,
That Trump,
Women against the wall,
That Trump
‘cause when you’re a celebrity
they let you do it.
Even if you rue it.

Or maybe,
just jump over Trump.
He’s a plump lump, that Trump
Reptilian id and ego,
A close friend to Iago
Sitting under greased palms at Mar-a-lago.

Why not a case or two
Of mumps for Trump?
Courtesy of RFK.

He’ll pump his fist, that Trump.
Smack you in the rump

Searching with his itsy-bitsy stump,
That Trump,
while you’re searching for something
sump-pump up.

So,
Why not
nail him, derail him, impale him,
wack and wump him,
that Trump.
Or what’s a heaven for?

THE END
ROCHELLE NEWMAN

Why must I always look nice , smooth my hair and match clothes, spend money on new
clothes for the relatives at holidays, when the president is already fried?
Why can’t I have a criminal record for selling fentanyl, when, again, the president has it.
Why shouldn’t I speak of my morbid interests, when the Kennedy homunculus is one
erection away from a necro-zoophile?
Why do I have to be an ‘adult’ when the right hand is a toddler! He’s at the top.
Why can’t I be spoiled rotten? They didn’t work hard.

Why do I have to speak nicely of my exes, when one pushed his ex to suicide?

Why can’t I kill that loud, annoying child? Do I have to wear camouflage and exclaim
“I’m defending myself!”? Oh right, you think my autism is cured. Should I accuse the
child of being an illegal immigrant, would that keep you from arresting me?

Why should I birth a child just so you can rape it later? I might as well kill it when it’s
born. Postpartum psychosis
doesn’t exist in your statistics
made in the money clogged colon.

The fear of pregnancy outweighs
the loneliness—
one that doesn’t even exist,
it’s a propaganda piece
heteronormative must lie
to continue.

Your body my choice,
your baby in the microwave
Your running to your mother
who denies your accountability.
Perhaps I will be better than Cassie Anthony
and mentally saner than the postpartcum psychotics
by keeping my pussy clean.
Plastics,

Your grief? Where is it? Aren’t you mad?
Ah, you’ll see it in the news.
Nothing is concrete until you
hear it from your favorite pipers.
his baby in the trash,
his child starved
beaten raped drugged
The priest may forgive you
But I know God won’t-
He’s not an idiot.

Nothing rhymes with orange.
But plenty of words work with dumpster fire.

Why write an ode
to such a chode,
when there are better things to do
with our lives?

He wont be here long,
just hang in there strong,
and he’ll fade away like a lingering stench
or an echoing fart.

How much can one man ruin!?
what is he even doing?!
Handing out favors to our enemies,
and wrecking the American empire!

Hire a felon,
have some Elon.
Elect a clown,
expect a circus.

We are watching the end of a political era,
Is it the end of the Whigs or the Social Democrats?

What should we make of a country that takes
Donald Trump as its leader
a second time?
The first time could be seen as an unplanned marriage –
that pounding head waking up the morning after in Vegas
married to the wedding singer moment.
But the second time? Knowing what’s passed between you?
After finally getting the chance to raise your unheard voice –
who would make this choice?
They know he won’t change but they’ve missed the wild swings of their Toddler King.
Apparently.

Oh, imagine Donald Trump the toddler.
No, not the grown man behaving badly but the real boy
small and stumbling and awkward, the occasional bump on his knees when he fell
counting on others to teach him how to share his toys
how to keep breathing when the focus shifted from here to there.
Someone should have shown him how to win and how to lose – with grace,
should have lit up at his delight, that smile on his little face.
Maybe someone did. But the unquenchable thirst to be first
came from somewhere and I can see past those burned down places in his heart
to that small boy still not sure of his worth.

And now? He crashes through the world like a dime store King Kong
poorly manufactured and smelling like fear
to all who come near him;
climbing his way to the tops of tall buildings
with pulleys and strings and ropes and things
hoping no one will notice he’s plastic and broken
and made mainly in Moscow.

He’s not content to simply be President of those United States,
to fix all that’s been broken with each word that’s spoken. It’s not enough.
He wants more. He starts with his nose pressed close
against the window of the Oval Office –
not even President yet, he proposes Canada be the 51st state,
supposes Greenland can be his with a cheque (payable at a later date)
and demands that the Panama Canal be returned – to him.
I imagine him stamping his tiny feet
as he wanders down empty and echoing marbled halls
chased by the unpaid debt of promises unmet at home
before he throws his sprawling ambition
against everybody else’s walls.

Canada won’t riot when the Toddler King calls our Prime Minister
the Governor of the 51st state. We’ll stay quiet.
But Greenland’s tied to Denmark and the Danes won’t play
the toddler’s game. They don’t ignore him or redirect him.
They firmly decline his offer and a biting satirical claim makes the rounds
in their name:
Why doesn’t Denmark run the States
if the job is too much for him to handle,
why don’t they create world-class education
and health care without corruption or scandal?
Under their cool and steady hands, the satirist reassures us
in a social media post
the country could be transformed from an empty mass of land
into a great nation. Again. He hopes.

The real Danes have a storied history of pushing
their Viking longboats out into the nearest sea
when the tides are right
reaching boldly towards their goals even if it means they have to fight.
These modern-day Danes aren’t looking for trouble,
don’t joke about conquering their friends
but, like all reasonable folks, they look for fire
every time they smell smoke.

Some people treat the Toddler King’s extra-territorial posturing as humour.
Can’t you take a joke? they say grimly
but nobody is laughing. Nobody dares smile.
Even Canada speaks up –
Isn’t customarily sorry after a while.
United for once from rural to urban
we give up on our neighbourly ties one by one
starting with Kentucky bourbon.

My mind wrestles me from sleep most nights
eyes still burning from the shock
of my latest social media feeds I lie
wide awake and wondering
If it’s too late to turn back the clock
so that Donald Trump the man
could let Donald Trump the boy
out of his frozen ice castle to play
before the Danes release their Vikings
and the next Great Age of Invasion is on its way?

Let the Americans and the World rise again
From the turmoil of the morose and docile dream.

When the News was meant for voice and information,
Now, the fairness dies to a fossil of a dream.

When children did not fear waking during nap time
To lose their rights by the apostles for a dream.

The Orange God who liberated terrorists
From prison to escape a jostle for a dream.

Mothers and daughters, sisters and friends, who want to
Escape foul leeches, but indocile to your dream.

Where the Gov’ restricts our bodies, hormones, and mind;
They bind and shove us through a throstle for a dream.

The MAGA Disciples who refuse to see woe,
As Thomas doubts as an Apostle for a dream.

God who was larger than life vanish to a husk,
When God was confronted by a colossal dream.

God and All Their Androgynous Glory despairs
When God knows that their love dies for an awful dream.

To watch neighbors, families, and friends wet their lips,
For the deficit Regime’s Brothel for a dream.

I, Aldous, who listens to the morning turmoil,
Where God passes with one last grovel for a dream.

The storm rages
and rips the crew asunder
“Our captain is a danger.”
“erratic and unsound.”
“not the leader we expected”
“not the leader we had hoped.”

Most, not in vengeful fret
vote to set the man adrift.
“Let him live.”
“Surely, he had no wish to do us so badly.”
“It was the roiling sea,
the changing wind,
the creeping death in foreign land
that made him thus.”
A few vote for the plank.

But our captain does not go easily into the water
as we load the lifeboat to ease his passage.
He argues to those who listen
and those who judge
but his story is puerile and profane
and divides anew
the already divided.

Oh, that ranting, raving wretch.
that wracking, wrenching, wreaking captain
does not go easily into the night.
and our ship wearily drifts –
lurching side to side.

Richard Mahr
2023

Beneath the smolder of ancestral skies,
where my mother’s loom wove threads of flame,
we traced our names in soil—unseen, unclaimed.
Liberators came with hollow eyes,
their maps redrawn in ink that bleeds like lies.

You speak of freedom, sir, in measured tones,
while your drones hummed lullabies of stone,
turning our rivers to ash, our songs to sighs.
Did you learn our stories? Or just the plots
where our blood became the pawn, the price forgot?

Each president a chapter, bound in dust—
promises like shrapnel, buried in our trust.
Your wars carved borders where our children sleep,
their dreams now ghost in cities scorched and steeped.

Yet still, we rise—not for your flag’s salute,
but for the roots that crack your concrete truth.
Our scars are not your legacy to script,
nor our resilience a debt to encrypt.

Forty-seventh shadow, your throne’s a fleeting pyre.
We are the embers no empire can retire.

The age of Trump and I don’t mean seventy.
I’m speaking of our time, our sad era, and I don’t mean aura,
although they say it is black, a dark presence.

Democracies don’t survive men who don’t need money.
What’s an oligarch, after all, but a democrat with dough?
Boohoo. The country’s going down the drain.

Yes, that was me you heard. I often sing to myself. I talk
to myself, too. I work up little speeches on the principles of
Horace. I practice my acceptance speeches.

I exhort the troops. I declare myself available to the people.
I resign. I throw in the towel. I declare war. I accept prizes.
Cicero, from my point of view, was the man.

People are starving for the truth.
Trump talked trash for two years but now promises to deliver.
Let’s call him the garbage man who makes deliveries.

He dumps it all directly on your lawn, front and back.
Good thing your flag is flying at half-mast.
Someone shot a cop last night and the killer is on the loose.

Demosthenes doesn’t hold a candle. Cicero and other Romans, including
the historians Sallust and Tacitus, knew a thing or two. One thing clear to
them but not to him was the importance of dangerous women.

This made the Romans scary. We know it’s true; the Greeks were naïve.
Treachery and intrigue ruled the roost – what fun! Juicy parts for the likes
of Glen Close and Sharon Stone: poisoned baths and whipped backsides.

The orators were putting their lives on the line. Public pronouncements could
be caustic. Talk about the deplorables! They devised verbal assassination
plots. There were epic put-downs: ridicule and denunciations.

The despairing come together. Christians celebrate wealth. A theology
of good fortune, a belief system based on bank accounts. Let them be.
Why shouldn’t the rich be happy? Leave misery to the poor.

Trump towers over the rest of us. He went to Wharton. He and his kids
have degrees in business. Calculation is one skill he’ll need. I for one
recommend reading Machiavelli’s “The Prince.”

Why would a successful businessman want his sons and daughters in trade?
Our business class produces clerks and bondsmen only; if not from the rich,
where are our artists to come; who else can afford Manhattan rents?

Trump says bravo when he looks at himself in the mirror. Why not live like there’s
no tomorrow? Then he thinks, “fuck that. I did it all myself. Why be nice?”
The poor lack stamina. We’re the opposite of resentful; we’re grateful.

We’re set for life. Our God doesn’t believe in sharing; it’s a religion of hoarding.
Membership’s limited to the greedy, deliberately. Fuck the needy. We’ll give them
financial aid to get to Heaven; there they practice affirmative action.

John Adams, America’s Founding Father, wanted his kids to write poetry, to be artists.
I urge Trump to call his children together. If not writers, then anthropologists.
Someone in this country has to study ancient languages.

When the bombing starts his artistic son can suggest we not bomb ancient sites or
capital cities. An artistic education might come in handy. With Presidents this low,
we depend on children to write their epithets.

Just read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. He loved the Romans. Lincoln did, too.
In America today, people obsess over the right to bear arms; they want to carry
concealed weapons. Of greater power is one’s tongue. A golden voice or a pistol?

Hell is an equal opportunity employer. Hallelujah. We’d prefer, it seems, to put
a cap in our opponent’s ass. We’ll know America is back when people once again
value the power of words and the right to speak them. Hell is an equal opportunity
employer, and everybody knows it. Hallelujah

What is the inevitable problem of life?
It has everything to do with survival.
The predator always has a razor-sharp eye for his prey.
The prey is looming with no fear,
Only faith to surpass the outlook on life after death.
Why is GOD creations the only ones that kill?
Who is responsible for the bloodshed in the past?
Situations occur at one blink of an eye.
That is how fast it takes for one to die.
That goes for all of us,
No matter what race, color, gender, etc.
We as human the days are numbered.
The time has come for us to become the prey,
And the predators are the once to make us extinct.
And for what! Just to eat each other.
In order to strive from one day to the next.
As the moons glows the night turns into death and mayhem.
When the sun comes out to shine.
Life and deception revealed in the shadows.

In halls where history is carved in bold strokes,
A fire burns that defies time’s steady hand—
Number 47’s presidency, both a rally and a provocation,
Echoes today through each fervent, divided stand.

Now, amid the clamor of modern debate,
Words once spoken continue to ripple through air;
A legacy forged in tumult and triumph alike,
Both a spark of change and a reminder of care.

Looking forward, tomorrow’s pages remain unwritten,
Yet the imprint of that era looms large and profound;
Future generations will sift through the echoes,
Finding lessons in the passion and the storm that resound.

In this ever-shifting theater of power and dream,
The present and future entwine in a complex art—
A presidency that lingers as both caution and catalyst,
A chapter of our story, etched deep in the heart.