The following poems have been mauled, marred and mutilated by Christopher Bernard

Trump Chaucer

(Adapted from Geoffrey Chaucer)

Whan that Novembre with his shoures sote                                                 The drought of sumer hath perced to the rote,                                           And bathed every veyne in swich liquor                                                         That wine must come out of its every flour,                                              Whan Fox News eek with its bitterr breeth                                   Depressed hath in every holt and heeth                                                         The rotting croppes, and the ageing sonne                                                   Hath in the his last halve cours yronne,                                                           And smale foweles maken threnodye,                                                             That slepen al the nyght with open ye                                                         Acause they cannot sleep, for comes the snowe,                                       And all must end that we will ever knowe,                                                   Then voters con to go to polling places                                                                   To cast thir votes in the correct spaces.

And so they came this yeere and voted dead                                               The world that made them, and us buriéd.

*

Invocation

(Adapted from George Chapman’s translation of Homer’s Iliad)

Fragment engraved in concrete on a sunken island off the coast of Hoboken, called Manhattan; ca. 2052 CE

Trumptilleus’ baneful wrath resound, O Goddess that imposed               Infinite sorrows on the world and many poor Dems loosed             From heads neurotic, sent them far to that invisible cave               Where no poll comforts, the night’s results to media vultures gave. Sing, O Muse, of the battle that led to the wretchedness of Hillary, Doyenne of the last hope of the Clintons [indecipherable]                 ……….. baleful ….. insult to the …. and lunacy [lunatic?] ……………………… choose ………. or …………………                         …..………………….. end of ……………………………

*

The Love Song of Donald J. Trump

(Adapted from T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”)

Let us go then, you and I,
When the election night is spread out against the sky
Like a voter etherized upon a table.
Let us go, through certain Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania streets,
The muttering retreats
Of one-night stands in a flashy Trump Hotel
And Jack-in-the-Box restaurants with flip-top hamburger shells;
Streets, like CNN, that follow a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . . .
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us grab a p***y and make our visit.

In the room the hotties come and go,
Talking of Rudie and Newt and Christie and every other bozo.

Indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and “Do I dare?”
Time to turn and descend the Trump Tower stair
With a bald spot in the middle of my orange hair
(They will say: “How his hair is getting thin!”),
My bespoke coat, my collar mounting firmly to my chin,
My neck tie never modest but certainly rich, asserted by a really fabulous pin
(They will say: “But how his hands are small and how his legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?

In the room the hotties come and go,
Talking of Rudie and Newt and Christie and every other bozo.

We have lingered in the chambers of Mar-a-Lago by the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown – and I mean, very brown –
Till the voters’ voices wake us, and we drown.