A contribution to Public Discourse in the Year of our Trump 2017

by John Ridland

I
Along twenty sandy beaches
The only leering thing
Was the eye of the donaldbird.

II
He is of three minds
Like a country
In which only one of the three favors the donaldbird.

III
The donaldbird whirled with the campaign winds.
He was the main cause of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Were one.
A man and a woman and a donaldbird
Were not..

V
I do not know which to deplore
More, the duty of listening,
Or the duty of voting,
The donaldbird twittering
Or just after.

VI
The electorate peered through the window
Of fogged-up glass.
The twitters of the donaldbird
Crossed to and fro.
The moods
Traced in the twitters
An absence of sense.

VII
O fat man of Manhattan,
Why do you gild all your buildings?
Do you not see how the donaldbird
Snuffles around the pussy-cats
Of the women about you?

VIII
We knew noble precedents
And pellucid, capable language;
But we know, now,
That it has devolved
To the donaldbird’s tweets.

IX
When the donaldbird ran out of cash,
He stiffed the contractors
On one of many constructions.

X
At the sound of the donaldbird
Lying that red lights are green,
Even the lords of bamboozlement
Would cry out, Sharpster!

XI
He rode over Florida
In a glass limo.
At once a fear pierced us
In that we mistook
The shadows of his equivocations
For donaldbirds.

XII
The river is melting.
The donaldbird must be leaving.

XIII
It is evening all over America.
He is snowing us
And he is going to snow us.
The donaldbird sits
On a palm-frond.