Martin Rowe

February 2017

I

Where are the songs of Spring? (That’s a good question.)
Where weeds in wheels shoot long and lovely and lush.
The darling bud’s not even a suggestion
The lark ascending but a darkling thrush.
The smell of fear’s cloaked by nasal congestion,
And hectic cheeks rosy with flu’s first blush:
We raise a cry, given our president,
“Now is the winter of our discontent.”

II

It’s only been two weeks, and madness brews!
The Constitution creeks and sighs and buckles.
The lawyers have descended! Talks of coups,
Secret cabals, and gangs may give you chuckles
But this seems all too real to me. A fuse
Is lit and my advice is “Get out your brass knuckles.”
For something quite explosive has begun
And there’ll be street-fighting before it’s done.

III

I know last canto’s tone was too threnodic.
But like so many, I was out of humor.
I sought for major strains, something melodic,
Yet all that sounded were the bells of doom; a
Long, plangent ululation—a monodic,
Dyspeptic groan at the malignant tumor
That’s formed within the body politic,
And hasn’t been excised yet. Sick, O sick!

IV

Therefore, instead of taking medication,
Let me recall a topos from the ages:
A listing of the heroes of the nation,
No longer here, but who now fill the pages
Of history books. They reached the highest station,
And by the lesson of their lives, these sages
Reveal to us it might not be as bad
As it might seem in this dark season. Sad!

V

Picture a man uneasy in his skin,
Of awkward gestures, blatant paranoia,
Without a friend, but enemies within,
Who craves respect from those he loathes; destroyer
Of an elite that will not let him in;
Whose fear is that a congressman or lawyer
Will strip from him the one thing he gets kicks in:
That’s power. I refer to Richard Nixon.

VI

Is Tricky Dick not the progenitor?
Think of it: subterfuge, plots, half-baked theories,
The all-consuming need to settle a score,
The exposés, the leaks, an endless series
Of depositions, cover-ups, and more,
Leaving the world astonished at the sheer ease
With which one man can macerate the nation
Because he doesn’t feel enough elation.

VII

But recall Harding and all Teapot Domes,
And Wilson’s resurrection of the Klan;
The bought-and-paid-for Gilded Age’s gnomes
Who helped the rich get richer; and the span
Van Buren to Buchanan. Thoughtful tomes
Indict their many failures and frauds. Can
We locate in the list an Anglo-Saxon
More cruel than the bloody Andrew Jackson?

VIII

I venture not. Yet mediocrities
(Like Major Major) need a sinecure.
We, too, need graft and crave perquisities!
How else will those of us—the immature—
Get others to do the work so we can squeeze
Into our schedule one more victory tour?
It’s fun to spend one’s time before adoring
Crowds chanting your name. All the rest is boring!

IX

This man, therefore, is not an aberration.
He seems that way because we have forgot
How much our past serves as an abnegation
Of how we dream we were and are: the rot
Of sharecropping and lynching, segregation,
Of Joe McCarthy, tenements, the lot
Of native peoples and the broken pacts:
These are not myths or misconstrued; they’re facts.

X

What if he’s ill, not merely solipsistic?
What if he cannot function without crisis?
You sense he’s desperate to go ballistic
And take thousands of troops to war with ISIS;
Inflate his chest and pose in a fascistic
Homage to Mussolini, which is why this
Scenario’s so weird. I ask again:
What if the U.S. president’s insane?

XI

It started at the Correspondent’s Dinner
When President Obama—who of late
This man had been asserting was a sinner
For not releasing his certificate
Of birth, and claiming he would soon begin a
Phishing trip to make sure he was innate—
Determined at the banquet with the accuser
To have a little fun with his abuser.

XII

It turned out that this “tough” investigator
Discovered that he didn’t like to see
The truth about himself. The fabricator
Resolved to run for office. History
Will demonstrate that this manipulator
Decided to hijack the GOP
Not out of love for ordinary folk
But just because he couldn’t take a joke.

XIII

The trouble is he’s not a merry pranker
Who loves to punk and make his little plays.
He thrives on chaos, enmity, and rancor,
Thrills in deflection, distortion, and malaise.
In English parlance, he’s a prick and wanker
Who kicks the sticks from old people, and preys
Upon the fragile. If he acts the thug,
He thinks, no one will see under the rug.

XIV

Talking of which, please tell me what’s that carpet
That sits atop his head? A dormant rat?
A shiny coprolite dug from a tar pit?
A grouchy and albino Maine Coon cat?
The decomposing body of a varmit
Or golden guano from a loose-boweled bat?
It looks like someone piled on wet spaghetti
And dried it to resemble a small Yeti.

XV

Now I don’t like to dwell in negativity:
I’m mostly Mr. Sunshine, happy camper.
If leaning toward the good is my proclivity
Then surely (without being a rubber stamper)
I should say something kind. For creativity
That’s only doom and gloom can be a damper
And make us want to clasp our knees and rock.
So I’ll reframe these features that I mock.

XVI

O weave supreme, a glorious tapestry
Of cultivated strands, metallic weft,
Frozen by gel, embalmed through chemistry,
Each follicle effulgent: right and left
Can marvel at the stylist’s topiary,
That threaded so few hairs into such heft.
Bald Opportunity is most dismayed
To see her single hair in that blond braid.

XVII

Filigreed fleece: an auric testimonial
To everything he’s hungered for since birth;
A cover for his failures (matrimonial,
Fiscal, moral, fiduciary). It’s worth
In sleek and contoured moldings oxygonial
That clasp his naked dome, more than the mirth
That falls upon its lustrous sward like dew
And polishes his barefaced self anew.

XVIII

And what about those gestures so balletic?
The forefinger and thumb (perverted mudra)
Bespeaking . . . what? Precision? Truth emetic?
The prissy, lordly condescension of his sudra,
That illustrates how easily the bathetic
Can hide the fact that an almighty budra
Is going to be inflicted on your ass?
Don’t be confused by postures that look crass.

XIX

O brazen sybarite, whose farouche moue
Puckers with such fastidious disdain.
Not even Blanche DuBois could swoon and stew
In such “melodramatic diva” vein.
Carnival barker, breathy ingénue,
Both Susan Alexander and Charles Kane:
Not to be rude or boorishly ungallant,
I must say: Leave the stage; you have no talent.

XX

What honeyed words shall we say of Melania?
That she’s a sylph in bondage to Silenus?
Or like the accursed fairy queen Titania
Enamored of an ass? A marbled Venus
Carved by jealous Pygmalion? An ania
To a flame? The sheath that covers up his penis
And offers him the semblance of propriety
To make sure it’s not unmasked in society?

XXI

Observing her pinched features, fixed and strained,
You sense that something has gone wrong. As if
What, years ago, she bargained for has drained
The joy from her. And like a living GIF
She’s trapped in the same gestures; every pained,
Thin smile; her slender body taut and stiff:
All seem to show she knows and fears her beau
Will one day say, “You’re fired,” and she’ll go.

XXII

Where is the joshing, where the amorous ease,
The warmth that comes from knowing that your guy
Has reached the top? I wonder, did he squeeze
Her hand that first night, look her in the eye,
And say that he was sorry for the sleaze,
But that man was no more? That he would try
To be someone of whom she could be proud,
With whom she could stand resolute, unbowed?

XXIII

Yet there she is, alone, untouched, ignored,
Or walks behind him as he strides ahead;
Locked in her ornate cage, depressed and bored
Out of her skull; with each day filled with dread
At what he’ll say or do next. Her reward
For being with him’s ultimately led
To being First Lady and the people’s house,
And yet she wakes still married to a louse.

XXIV

Unlike the elder children, with their shrewd
Accommodations to the Chief, their sire,
She and her son look haunted and subdued.
What does she know, what has she seen transpire
Within those marbled walls? Did she conclude
That it was best to shrink back and retire
Rather than be herself and thereby cross
The man she once loved, who is now her boss?

XXV

Has she awoken in the dark of night
And wandered to the living room to find
His fleshy face bleached by the cellphone’s light
Or staring at the TV screens? Do kind
Hands settle on his shoulders: “It’s not right,”
She says, “they’re messing with your mind.
Let them alone and come to bed, my sweet.
It doesn’t matter. You’ve no need to tweet”?

XXVI

Does he reply, “You’ll never understand.
I cannot let them have the final word.
I’ve never lost. I always win. Command
And others act—that’s me. No little turd
With half a brain will beat me. I demand
Complete respect”? And, undeterred
(While she retreats, knowing she’s tried her best),
Do his two stubby fingers do the rest?

XXVII

So much for being nice! I must admit
I find it hard to separate the man
From that office in which he sits. The shit
Is flying but has not yet hit the fan,
And so we wade through ordure. Piles of it:
A vast lake from Orlando to Spokane.
And every gesture, statement, and mishap
Bears undisputed vestiges of crap.

XXVIII

So, no, I won’t go high when they go low.
(Apologies, Michelle!) What sorts of scold
Would Swift or Joseph Heller or Thiong’o
Be if they meekly did as they were told
By those in power? When the ill winds blow
You open up your cheeks and blast, tenfold,
Ripostes both sobering and pedagogical,
Or, failing that, overtly scatological.

January 2017

I

In olden days, a writer with pretension
To voice his people’s hopes in anathemata,
Would make a case for being in contention
By laying down an ode or smooth hexameter,
Before composing something with dimension
For fear he’d be exposed as a rank amateur.
Why show you’re just another two-bit schemer
And what’s more do it in ottava rima?

II

But there’s no time for lengthy preparation:
The game’s afoot, time ripe, the need is now.
The fate of the Republic’s our vexation:
Whether we get through these four years, and how.
When a sham ignoramus runs the nation,
Who cares if I’m sufficiently high-brow
To catch the wretched agon of the times
Successfully in Dante’s piquant rhymes?

III

Lord Byron knew the mixture well: Don Juan
Incorporates the seemly and the seamy.
And given the age, I venture that a new one
Should be both sanctimonious and steamy.
To flavor our shock at thinking of who won
And help us chew, then somewhat tart and creamy
Must be my verse: to catch the zeitgeist’s mood
Demands the euphuistic and the crude.

IV

It’s usual in this type of composition
To issue forth a ringing invocation:
A call to arms, a plea for a commission
To bind the wounds; and find an apt location
From which to make a suitable petition
Or lift the veil upon a desecration.
I need a spot where I can coalesce
Each bilious outflow in one putrid mess.

V

O sweet Gowanus: issue forth your scents
To cleanse my verse; your waters rank and deep
Dissolve my acrid spewing; in your dense
Alembic boil each noxious phrasing, steep
Within your nacreous current each offense,
And turn from dross to gold this steaming heap
That like compost builds life. Is it obscene
To call on you, my flush-full Hippocrene?

VI

Where are you KENTILE sign, whose lambent beams
Once shone upon the toxic sites below?
Where are the slicks you lit, the oiltar seams,
The bodies swaying in the undertow
Of the canal? Bless all my fetid memes,
Which rise above South Brooklyn’s dirty glow,
All you who muse of soft tranquility
When stuck in traffic on the BQE.

VII

Muse, cross the bridges: Newark’s meadows sweet,
Old Cleveland’s groves, the springs of Buffalo,
Descant upon the passing of Main Street,
Now empty, once full not so long ago.
Detroit shall echo, Gary shall repeat
That what was once created is no mo’:
For why spend time in genuine creation
When wealth is made through idle speculation?

VIII

Look! How we close our eyes, and levers yank
And buttons push (the way we refinance);
Or rub the lotto genie and so bank
Our futures on the one-in-a-million chance!
Deposits going south, stocks in the tank,
Our houses worthless. And yet, in a trance,
We reckon if we placed just one more bet
We’d magically absolve us from our debt.

IX

Speak, Prophet, let each narcissistic byte
Gnaw at the Babel tower of this age.
Dismantle every cable droid, indict
Each billion-dollar suit, and turn your rage
Upon the posing proxies that each night
Pour forth the toxic gas that drives the gauge
That measures book advances, honoraria,
And gobs of cash spit forth for faux hysteria.

X

Descry, O Instant Messenger, the stores
And houses boarded up, the vacant lots
And men who cluster at the corner, scores
To settle or trace up arms, the easy shots
That have no consequence—for all the doors
Have long since been foreclosed on. Join the dots,
You gamers, for the people are in hock
For taking and not taking enough stock.

XI

Direct your gaze toward the gilded suite
Within the Tower; settle on the sofa,
And ponder as the bully deigns to meet
Each sycophantic leech and fawning gopher,
How much he smirks as on their knees they bleat
For work, pretending he is not a loafer.
As long as they’re on good terms with the bruiser,
They think that he won’t shame them as a loser.

XII

A puffed-up peacock, scabrous popinjay,
Falstaff without the grace or sack or wit,
A loathsome lech, a spawn of Rabelais,
A thin-skinned and vainglorious hypocrite,
Is the Commander of the USA.
Consider that when next you take a shit.
Let tumble from your bowels into the pan
Quite what you think about this wretched man.

XIII

“But wait!” I hear you say, “he’s now our chief,
And sixty million folks can’t be mistaken.
We needed change, and Hillary’s a thief,
And now the ruling classes are left shaken,
Because of their presumption. All your grief
Is mere sour grapes. And soon you will awaken
In a U.S. of A. that’s rightly ours,
In which we’ll wield full presidential powers.”

XIV

My answer to these claims of right is “No.”
No to accepting that this harlequin
Has any right to strut and primp and crow.
I see no cause to offer him my chin
To punch. This baldfaced Braggadoccio
Will not go underided. If I sin
It would be in not being hard enough
Upon the flaunting, pompous piece of fluff.

XV

“Good riddance to Obama!” comes the cry,
“The Muslim, godless stooge, the Communist,
The enemy within, the Kenyan spy,
The interloping, two-faced terrorist,
With his transgendered wife!” A desperate try
To stigmatize a couple who’ll be missed.
Your fears were never real, but fever dreams:
Unlike your man; for he is as he seems.

XVI

What standards the Obamas had to meet!
They couldn’t get angry, browbeat or defame,
Or marry twice or thrice. They couldn’t tweet
Insults or obloquy, affront or shame.
Their kids had to be kind and smart and sweet,
Michelle considerate and without blame:
They always had to make a good impression
And not commit a solitary transgression.

XVII

And now we are confronted with this Nero
Who’ll fiddle as the planet burns: his pride
And vanity unmatched; the perfect hero
For this land, where all flagrancy’s denied,
Compunction shunned, and where a total zero
Can make torture a virtue, and deride
As quisling crybabies those who attempt
To offer another vision. What contempt!

XVIII

Is it not weird he has no hinterland?
No book or film or play that moved his soul,
No cultural lodestars, neither small nor grand,
That left him vulnerable or made him whole?
It seems that all is surface (and it’s tanned),
A world of flash and shimmer, without toll:
No weight of loss or sorrow or regret.
Good grief, he doesn’t even have a pet!

XIX

What will he do when he is called to grieve
When natural disaster strikes the nation?
One-forty characters will not relieve
The pain of lives destroyed; nor adoration,
Disdain, or ridicule help us believe
The leader knows the sting of deprivation.
When hugs need to be given, will he reel?
Or, arms extended, will he cop a feel?

XX

More worryingly still, when terror hits,
As it most surely will, will he react
Judiciously, advisedly? Or blitz
A city, region, country when attacked
To prove his manliness? Or blow to bits
Each treaty, bloc, agreement, and compact:
To give the terrorists all that they need
To fill the beds once more at Walter Reed?

XXI

Perhaps the Prez will be as disengaged
As George Bush was in his first months: content
To go on victory tours and get enraged
At SNL, while trying to foment
Some phony crisis so he’s not upstaged
By the dull busyness of government.
He’ll sit counting his future bucks and cents
And leave the Executive branch to Veep Mike Pence.

XXII

The danger is he’ll think he knows it all:
Filling the airwaves with his contradictions.
There’ll be perpetual conflict, and in thrall
To all the fires he sets and all the fictions,
Distracted by the thrill of daily brawl,
We’ll spend our outrage feeding our addictions.
Meanwhile the Congress will pass legislation
To end the federal administration.

XXIII

Of course, one hopes that the judicial branch
Will act to halt congressional overreach;
That genuine conservatives will blanche
At efforts to undermine freedoms of speech,
Assembly, privacy; will salve or stanch
The wounds inflicted; or they’ll block the breach
Made in the wall dividing church and state,
And protect the defenseless against hate.

XXIV

One might repose some hope, if just a flicker,
That senators will act, well, senatorial,
And seek out common ground to act (don’t snicker!).
If not, then it’s not too conspiratorial
To fear that this Republic (here’s the kicker),
Will fold before the frankly dictatorial:
And all that will be left will be amurcous
Game shows of unrelenting bread and circus.

XXV

Yet what about the notion that this chump
Will (at last!) shake things up, and, by upending,
Return some power to the people, pump
The economy with infrastructure spending,
And catapult us from this so-called slump
Into a future glory never-ending?
Of course, he might—except that he’s abstaining
From every promise that he made campaigning.

XXVI

What makes this flagrant treachery more galling
Is how he savors playing us for fools.
Beyond his bluster, tantrums, and name-calling
His goal seems only to dispense with rules
To allow infractions even more appalling.
It’s all too clear that he considers tools
The folks who voted for him, suckers all,
Stick figures scrawled upon his bullshit Wall.

XXVII

The coal and steel jobs are not coming back,
Obamacare’s repeal has no replacement;
The Wall will not be built, and every claque
Is lining up for patronage. Abasement
Will be complete when every stooge and hack
Is settled into every job and space meant
For those who care for their agency’s mission,
Instead of beating it into submission.

XXVIII

So now we wait to see what fate will show.
The USA has been through worse—survived
The Civil War, and slavery, Jim Crow,
Pearl Harbor, Vietnam, Watergate; revived
Following 9/11, even so
A flame of hope is sometimes just contrived,
Reliant on exclusion and amnesia;
Dispensed through a collective anesthesia.

XXIX

Of course, I hope that we are proven wrong,
And suddenly he is magnanimous:
Reforms the prisons, builds the roads, makes strong
The economy (and does it without fuss),
Returns power to where it should belong,
While not throwing the weak under the bus,
And, while admitting that he can be crude,
Ensures that only rich people are screwed.

XXX

And now we wait for the Inauguration,
Our senses frayed, and hearts and souls a-flutter,
What will he say to soothe a frazzled nation?
What soaring rhetoric will this man utter?
Will he, at last, ascend to meet the station
To which he aspired, or will he simply mutter
A few pat phrases from the autocue
Before attacking his latest bugaboo?

XXXI

What will it be? Four years of garbled tweets,
Of grievance, petulance, dissimulation?
Four years of protest marches in the streets,
Met each night with a pettish lucubration?
Of dirt (financial and between the sheets),
Corruption, filth, and misappropriation;
Or something else? Distinction or disgrace?
We’ll find out soon enough; so, watch this space.