TWO CHEERS FOR TREASON
January 6, 2021
A mob stormed the Capitol
killing five police, wounding over 100.
Some were blindly loyal to Trump,
taken in by his “stolen election” line;
others were simply spoiling for a fight.
But-- despite the gallows prepped and ready,
Mike Pence didn’t get hung.
Despite Senators willing to double-cross voters,
replace electors with puppets,
and kiss the incumbent’s ring,
each state’s votes were ratified.
And despite Trump’s sore-loser grousing,
he wound up a lame duck.
December 12, 2022
MTG boasts to the NY Young Republicans Club:
“I gotta tell you something.
If Steve Bannon and I had organized that,
we would have WON.
Not to mention, it would have been armed.”
Here’s a Representative from Georgia
bragging that she could have pulled off
a better insurrection.
She would have brought more firepower,
blasted her way through those cops.
She would have marched over the dead and wounded,
defeated Congress, and forced their hand.
She would have WON.
Backed by guns and slogans,
she would have awarded Trump the oval office,
perhaps President for life.
Is this payback for Appomattox?
Rebellion not quelled, just postponed?
Trump’s infantry was a mix of malleable misfits,
Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Q-Anon fruit-loops,
and politicians with an eye to the main chance.
January 6 was the day they’d change the world.
If a cult figure mouthing MAGA
could be enthroned at gunpoint,
kingmakers would hold undisputed power.
We would have won.
January 3, 2023
MTG places her hand on a bible
and swears to uphold the Constitution.
Are her fingers crossed?
She bragged she could bring the US to its knees--
if she led that mob;
if she armed the rioters
so they could gun down law enforcement;
if she took possession of the Capitol
to thwart Congress’ Constitutional job.
Her victory? Sabotaging a presidential election.
It makes one wonder:
should a person who cheers for gun-toting thugs
be running our country?
Should a person who brags about trashing ballots
be making laws?
Georgia’s white, rural 14th District thinks so.
They re-elected her,
despite her off-the-wall statements--
Jewish space lasers cause California wildfires.
Vaccinations are the devil’s “mark of the beast.”
Black Lives Matter protesters are terrorists.
Undocumented immigrants are rapists.
Transgender individuals are predators.
Abortion seekers and providers are murderers.
Democrats are pedophile-coddling Communists.
MTG hopes to be Trump’s running mate in 2024.
Trump, too, thinks his defeat so outrageous
that it justifies suspending the Constitution.
The two are salt and pepper shakers
showering spite and bile on a fragile democracy.
Abetting a taste for hate.
Copyright 12/2022 Patricia Doyne
TRUMP’S VIRTUES
Trump’s gung-ho to run again
in 2024.
He says it wasn’t fair that he
got booted out the door.
Many think him crass, it’s true.
Self-serving. Prone to lies.
But maybe narcissistic traits
are virtues in disguise.
He is, despite his girth and weight,
a physical fitness buff.
Visited golf links 308 times,
spent a quarter of his term on golf.
When shooters shoot up schools and malls
we know guns aren’t for Trump.
Five times he dodged his country’s draft.
Said casualties were chumps.
And family values is a realm
where Trump does truly shine.
Jared and Ivanka flaunt
his regime’s family line.
Forget two dozen rape reports
and Stormy Daniels’ book,
‘cause family pride glows in third wife
Melania’s well-dressed look.
What’s more, he reaches out a hand
to one-time foes. (Don’t groan.)
He sends love notes to Kim Jong-Un,
gets an $18 million loan.
When journalist Khashoggi died
at the consulate in Turkey,
“Bin Salman ordered it,” said the CIA.
Trump said the facts were murky.
And when Trump won, a Russian hand
pulled strings. The CIA spied it.
Said, “Russia, leave our elections alone!”
Shrugged Trump, “Putin denied it.”
Yes, Trump extends a welcoming hand
to strong men he admires.
Sells airplanes, crude oil, tanks and guns
to somewhat shady buyers.
And Trump’s an open-minded man.
When Neo-Nazis march,
he sees good people on both sides,
beneath free speech’s arch.
When Ye claims Hitler’s misunderstood,
and Fuentes flat denies
the Holocaust was real, that’s cool.
“Respect their views,” Trump cries.
His bosom buddies—Roger Stone,
Steve Bannon, Alex Jones—
show how Trump welcomes one and all,
especially pale skin-tones.
He disses “shithole countries.”
He tried to build a wall.
Just goes to show that Trump was true
to MAGA’s siren call.
And Trump’s unique. Never before
a President twice impeached.
He’s going down in history—
for January 6th, at least.
So if you want to bad-mouth Trump,
Please take careful note
of all his virtuous qualities
when you step up to vote.
Copyright 12/2022 Patricia Doyne
Q-ANON MEETS QVC
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
reveal the winner I really am—
not a fat old suit with a long, red tie,
tan from a tube, hair fussed and sculpted.
No, show my base their favorite President--
Better than Lincoln!
Better than Washington!
Show the whole world the superhero
who should have won.
A MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT:
(Drumroll)
Digital Trading Cards!
Only $99 each.
Send your money, we’ll choose your NFT.
Take what you get; what you get is virtual.
It exists in the ether,
like the image, like the “very exclusive community”
I’m selling.
See me in a cowboy hat and duster,
a western lawman.
See me dominate the room in a black tuxedo.
See me suited for space, two feet on the moon.
See me alone on a bleacher-ringed field,
owning that football.
See me speeding to the rescue on a white horse.
See me in a mild-mannered blue suit
ripping open my shirt to reveal a red “T”
and scald the world with laser eyes.
The face is mine, but photo-shopped bodies
are all young and buff.
The world needs superheroes.
But the world’s got me.
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
show the world I’m what they really want
virtually.
Copyright 12/2022 Patricia Doyne
Poetry from RP Verlaine
No Xmas Tree Just an empty bottle of very good whiskey, 2 women, and a drink during the course of a week that ended with us not speaking to each other since. I put a rose like those I steal from the neighbors garden in said bottle as I reminder there is much beauty In this world. Even with the women gone. The knife one of them threw at me for looking at her friend’s legs remains on the floor where it landed after hitting the wall and missing me by a foot. A reminder that any New Year’s Eve even for a man with little to lose can be more curious than planned. I/he does not mind the things they stole or borrowed with ill intent. Who alone with all that once was still reaches for what lingered sweet long enough to be savored. His wedding ring lost in a desk alongside knowledge she pawned hers. He places a comically large Seashell to ear just to hear the sea scream for the past like him on most days. She's OK Almost She says but her glazed eyes lost pinpoints of confusion tell me different and her skin sallow with track marks I can't tell if old or new just that they tell a story I already know the ending to. We talk of poetry we performed once, together apart to smatterings of applause long ago. Of those we thought we knew under lights spilling their souls with captivating corrupted vehemence. But she hasn't read in years. Tells me I look like I'm doing well. She's offended when i ask if she needs money... yet takes what I give waving as she walks away into the darkness on an unusually otherwise bright sunny day. Ex On the Street Not being invisible or able to hide when she spots me first with X-ray eyes. The air, getting thinner when she hugs me, as if we’re still together, as if that fatal night hadn’t happened. Then she says that I look good, that I’ve lost weight, but I don’t and haven’t, staring at her smiling face. Love demands forgiveness but losing your lover & your best friend in one cruel night I never counted on. I say goodbye 5 times. It’s like she doesn’t hear my last image of her, him in her mouth, in our bedroom, clear. One of us was in love and the other escaped as I do now with alacrity all shaken and wounded by a past now present.
Rp Verlaine, a retired English teacher living in NYC, has an MFA in creative writing from City College. He has several collections of poetry including Femme Fatales Movie Starlets & Rockers (2018) and Lies From The Autobiography 1-3 (2018-2020). Rp’s work has been featured in Punk Noir, Ygdrasil, and Runcible Spoon.
Poetry from Dudu Tome
Therapeutics
It is misting this morning.
So, I open the door to my mouth,
unattired, bring out my tongue,
to kiss waters, undiluted.
And this is a great healing:
Our village market has so many routes.
I mean there are ways to live
in places where air is not measured
with a needle’s eye.
And this is a path to life: bonding––
bond to what gives you hope,
to what gives you a clan,
to what or who calls your name
each time a gusty wind makes itself known
and news about broken things hover around.
So I ask: when harmattan visits,
will you take me as your tropical plant
and spray on me fine droplets? Will you?
Calling for Waters
Because I know darkness is a pebble in search
of a home within me, I call for a drink of water
be it ice falling from heavens,
morning misting on leaves,
a drop of tears from rocks
or the salty sea enclosing borders
to flush them beyond death chamber
before they know the sweetness of success.
Because every day knows the hug of night,
I mean to say light is a man
and darkness is a beautiful maiden
standing along the lane to our home,
waiting to mould us into victims of fate;
(but fate is not a living thing)
I call waters from the depth of holy well
for cleansing. So I would sight only white angels
chanting my name into unending life.
Because I discover my demons are sour salts,
I poke the rock holding me captive.
What proceeds out of it I call fluid,
you can call it waters from within me.
So my demons would know the feel
of body melting into pain, into grief.
Because I love the sound of the drum echoing:
life is a lollipop in the hands of a toddler,
I call upon waters to heal me, in every way possible.
Become Waters
There is fire burning beneath my skin.
It is ruthless than the kind of fire
your clergy makes you see on worship days.
Do not imagine this. Some caked bread
are better not shared––I’ve swallowed this one.
This is not me displaying my pains on a 5D screen.
The smokes erupting from my body is the reason
the neighbourhood’s nose breathed questions.
And yes, this is the answer you seek.
Forgive me. I am stingy with the spirit.
Let my body alone be filled with it until I am
reduced to fine particles on the palms of earth,
until I become the regalia of ash worn by wind.
Be alive, yes live in a peaceful piece
but become waters––water is life. Become waters.
Be alive. Be life itself. Friend, I shall burn.
A cut of this fire said so in a foreign tongue––
it took me a while to crack this hard nut.
Forgive me I did not tell you soon enough
that I am the brown pigment on your roof.
In a flash, be waters––hug me into life eternal.
You live. I would leave and live in you.
Lyrics from Chimezie Ihekuna
Song Title: Take The First Step Genre: Pop Chorus Take the first step (2ce) And see what comes out of it (3ce) Verse 1 They say ‘the journey of a thousand mile begins with a step’ Yea, taking a step could be very herculean Fear of failure would suffice as the rationale However, taking the risk is worth it After all, failing forward is better than not stepping out The journey of success begins with taking the first step So, take the giant stride Take the first step! Chorus Take the first step (2ce) And see what comes out of it (2ce) Verse 2 Discouragement is a part of success Success is a journey, not a terminus Determination without conception is like reaching a destination without intention Consistency is inevitably important Life is what you make of it Walk your talk to see your worth You learn those only if you take the first step Now, take the first step! Chorus Take the first step (2ce) And see what comes out of it (3ce) Verse 3 The first step in life is uneasy; It’s like you taking the bull by the horn It’s similar to how tasking it would be putting the crown on your head The first step is a lesson that would give room for further learning; It’s like getting past the hurdles of life It’s similar to taking away life’s road blocks The first step marks the road to your freedom A great feat it would be when you take the first step! Chorus Take the first step (2ce) And see what comes out of it (3ce)
Poetry from Olawe Opeyemi
The Way I’d Like to Die
When my folk penned the lines
“The way I’d like to die”
Short but as a hero
With gold amass, laid dead on them
Then I posted to myself how I’d like to die
And my heart pondered a whit
I’d like to live wealthy, abound
Enough to acquire my desires without a sigh,
For that makes life easier.
I’d like it long and old
Telling tales of yesteryears to my grands,
For nothing more refreshing than that.
I’d like it calm and tranquil
With faces of loved ones to gaze at,
Without them, life is a misery.
I’d like to live on, ages ahead
In the minds of men, both acquaintance and aliens
With my footprint seen on the Niger
For that’s the greatest achievement ever.
I know no death bad, for none which is good
But I fair not as a dog on the road
Neither like a prey to a predator
Yet when at last death did me seek
I’d like it gentle and fast
Peaceful, with little regret behind
Then I’d have the rest I crave
Only then would death be a release
Short story from Lorena Caputo
TRUJILLO You are a town spun in history, from Cristóbal Colón’s last voyage to a port protected from pirates by the Spanish Fortaleza Santa Bárbara, from the first capital of this nascent country to the execution of filibuster William Walker. Many had their embassies here: France, Spain, England, the US. And both United Fruit and Standard Fruit left their cobwebs, too. ~ ~ ~ I wander through the odd clutter of Señor Galván’s museum. A band’s musical instruments, collections of coins and bills. Ship anchors and moorings. Old wine and patent medicine bottles. Treadle sewing machines, branding irons, the chair and bed of a man who lived to be 106. Mayan artefacts from the sierra. Assorted alligator and shark skulls. Caged monkeys reaching for a human hand. And from the Companies themselves. A Standard Fruit lamp and sugar cane press. A United Fruit telephone and fan, railroad jacks, a brakeman’s lantern. And a 1940s brick of the Yunay Fruit Co. Mamita Yunai … United Fruit Out front corrodes the wreckage of a C130 that crashed near Puerto Castilla. All 21 crewmembers were killed from Howard AFB in Panama. It was never explained to us what this plane was doing here that 22 January ’85 … in Contra territory. ~ ~ ~ I am spellbound by the tangled web. I pass days talking with Mr Galván and in the public library unraveling history. For only a short two years did Vaccaro Brothers and Co (later Standard Fruit) spin its domain eastward to here. Those siblings had their fincas of sugar cane and syphilis-curing sarsaparilla. They timbered the precious hardwoods of these surrounding jungle hills. Afterwards United Fruit came (in 1904, Señor Galván says) and later hid under the guise of the Trujillo Rail Road Co. For lands in this area, it promised to build the railroad to Jutigalpa and beyond to Tegucigalpa. It laid the line from port to plantations: Puerto Castilla and Trujillo to Olanchito, Tocoa, Savá and no further. Amid excuses of land blackened by sigatoka, United left in 1940, before the Honduran government could confiscate the fincas and rails for not fulfilling its contract. When the Boston Octopus pulled out, families sold their furnished homes for a mere 400 Lempiras. Still, to this day, some rich people have a hundred houses or more. And so this town fell into a quiet backwater. Black Caribe and whiter ladino intermarried. Over the years, the memories faded. Only Mr Galván remembered why the Fruit Company submerged a train east of the pier: To protect the beachhead from erosion. The plantations way out yonder changed once more to Standard Fruit. In the 1980s, the US-Contras arrived with training camps and cocaine-for-arms trade routes. Within these jungle swamps, the US military had clandestine bases (or so say its veterans, in fear-hushed voices). And little by little, the foreign travelers came, seeking the tranquil sea, the safe beaches, a town free from crime. A new posh resort is built, The Christopher Columbus. Ninety-two full-time staff but few guests. The locals say it’s a CIA den owned by Ollie North, Secord and former-Contra friends. And after almost 90 years, Standard Fruit makes its return. A high concrete wall with barbed wire surrounds the eight or so unseen houses within. Strong floodlights safeguard the grounds. These are the homes of the CEOs who work at Puerto Castilla. ~ ~ ~ One evening in a pleasant hide-away café – with rattan chairs, glass-topped tables, plants, English newspapers – an ex-pat United Statien tells the owner and me her family wants to move from Tela. The scene is getting too heavy there – the crime, the cocaine. They have found a house near the Company’s complex. But it has no electricity. They must ask Standard Fruit for permission to put it in. Its security comes first. When I first came to Trujillo during Christmas holidays in ’93, I could stroll alone several kilometers along the beach. I’d leave my belongings on the powdery sand and swim in that crystal-blue Caribbean. But two years later, with clenched fists and teeth, trujillanos tell me, It isn’t safe any longer to walk those isolated stretches. Inlander ladinos are migrating in search of the work the tourism surely brings. But there are no jobs … One night from Olanchito they came to the Garífuna bars in Cocopando. A white woman danced with a black man. Six redneck ladinos shot up the place. Two more years or so pass. One evening, walking through town, seven foreigners are robbed and stabbed. One dies. And that cocaine now floats like a blizzard along these ex-Contra coastal routes.
Poetry from Z.I. Mahmud
Christendom of Sir Walter Scott-the connoisseur and realm of Ivanhoe
Peevish abbotsford enchanted a woodcraft with holding a candle to the devil
The fair Jewishness of the Maiden incumbent Rebecca’s life endangered in chastisement
O holy daughter of Rachael cried and lamented the Isaac of York in agony, grief and fear
Chivalrous Ivanhoe, forgotten and oblivious of of the atonement of the sylphlike Damsel?
Unflinching moral realism struck the heart of Sir Walter Scott adhering to the devastating plight
And indulgence in carnage of conflagration among the vainglorious; and fierce and haughty Templar’s temperamental outburst; and vehemence
The necromancy of witchcraft and wizardry, avaricious sorcery and gluttonous elixirs were the allegations the daughter of Isaac of York: beautiful Jewish Maiden being convicted,
Despite the precarious predicament she wasn’t dissolute, seduced or profaned!
Had had the fierce Brian De Bois-Guilbert in proclamation of misdemeanor; amidst irksome, wearisome and starvation and imprisonment, blows and strikes, journeys and indigestion; I profess this avowed and promised solemn ambition of entreating a relationship: succour and relish through consummation of nuptial and procurement
The valiant and renowned Ivanhoe’s fair and royal Christian Mistress Lady Rowena’s aphoristic relation
Didn’t give Ivanhoe a dirty look from Rebecca’s shimmering and, starkly starry eyes in the glimmering twilight
Exorcisms performed with the errand of obsequies towards apparition dwelling grotesquely in English blood and countryside and farmyards:
Deeming rectitude of Norman and English aboriginality
Wherefore minstrels, swineherds fools, chaplains and bishops
Singing the song in chorus of phantom delight in reverie;
The Black Knight restored to the monarchy whilst yonder venison bestowed in grace abounding :
Endowed amidst the Sherwood foresters anchorites Robin Hood, Friar Tuck and the merry men
Spellbinding merry men thus rejoicing and obliged in aura of disencumber and entwined enticement and delusion
Recurrence beams of the sundown dissolved in ecclesiastical importunities;
Apostle’s epistle enrolled and entitled to the sepulcher of Rebecca:
Sherwood forests blaze and romanticize a chakra and mantra in the nirvana as an incantations to bid adieu and farewell to thee: Rebecca The Blessed Virgin!
To the Drunken Spirit of William Blake- A poetry written as fiction in free and blank verse
Oh Blake with your drunken spirit you’ve adorned,
The everlasting grace and beauty of the Gospel.
You’ve illuminated mankind with your Poetical Sketches,
I love the Lamb and sympathize the ecstasy of a little kid.
With the proclamation of lifelong belief you have painted;
Through imagining The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Humanity burst into warring fragmented lamentations;
Ah! Milton and Jerusalem appeared in reconciled visions.
Your engravings sculptured, color drawings printed:
And the water color illustrations giving a feeble and tottering The Real Man The Imagination which liveth forever.
I read William Wordsworth’s commentary in the pleasantries exchange with the saying goes:
“There is no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.”
I narrate the gladdening and overwhelming tidings of:
Henry in a letter to the Damsel Dorothy-
He lives…enjoying constant intercourse with the world of spirits. He receives visits from Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Voltaire etc..etc..etc and has given me repeatedly their words in conversations.
Have you been pondering in enchanted walks too Blake?
Might have nymphs and fairies in bewilderment.
Wherefore divine incarnations of Blake stare at distress
In stunning blasphemy thus Antichrist dwells in dismay.
Jesus voice thundering sounds in compelling spirits
As stones bleed John; Satan put sin in the cross and tomb.
You are a mental traveler Blake: preacher romantic
And here I present my farewell to your soul spiritual heal.
My Quill at Parchment Upon Reading Banquet Lecture of Lord of The Flies Laureate Novelist and Playwright William Golding
Golding’s holiday privilege -heyday castle of ‘Seashore’
Beached cavern where King David and King Solomon
Resigned at proverbs and psalms
A mermaid entombed of Julia of Norwich
Buried upon the banks of the Western seashore amidst rocky cliffs
Whereupon and hithertofore silvery greyed Golding’s ivory epitaph parchments
Gracing engraved magical spells-‘We need more humanity, more care and more love’
The Earth Mother Gaia washes away the flotsam jetsam along with her tresses of waving bluish splashing caresses
Quintessentially I have reached there and been starkly marvel
Wondering the blazing thought of mysteries sea creatures and marine life
We as children of the dear stars
What shine sparkling stellar wreaths of laurels
No sooner had I reached tumult and strife creeping pavements bleakish thoroughfares, than it became clear to me that the place I should be was the isle of seashore’s I had just forlorn
Aaaargh! Pity me my dearest soul!
Had I but a glimpse of noon-time with my Julia Juliet upon the weeds and reeds
Serenading my beauty’s bosom, me and the seashore’s flowering oasis purplish greenery
Being a universal pessimist forevermore; I shall detest fairy tales
Allegorizing ghoulie ghostie or weea beastie.
Since these very spirits dehumanizing and denaturalizing
That drives my heyday temperance of sanity to formidable cauldron of vanity
Foggy and frosty mournful snowman Golding’s threshold fireplace
Suppertime roaring howler alderman, corporations and liveries harangue
Disgracer supper a bad lobster thrown away into the gutters
In disenchantment sea butter feather fluttering in abysmal dismay
Abhorring in abominable spirits of phantom spectre chunk of undigested beef
Legions of goblins
Despising in admonishing guffaw of a fragment of potatoes undone