Frank Osen


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The Major Embarrassment’s Song

I am the very model of a Very Stable Genius,
My regnancy’s surreal as any movie by Fellini is,
My cabinet of billionaires, incompetents and Goombahs is
Adept at sucking up as the most powerful of Roombas is;
Should I have any problem on my Ryan or my Graham flanks,
A threat to speak with WikiLeaks turns lions into laah-amb shanks.
Though every day’s dramatic as an opera by Puccini is,
I am the very model of a Very Stable Genius.

My hectoring at times can go ballistically beyond harangue—
Just ask my little doppelgänger, Rocket Man, in Pyongyang—
Yet I’ve united all the world: from Haitians in their lowliness
To legions of Norwegians, I am hailed now as His Hole-iness.
When Putin says I’m pliant as a freshly buttered blini is,
I know I am the model of a Very Stable Genius!

Frank Osen‘s work has appeared in publications including The Dark Horse, The American Arts Quarterly, The Spectator, and The New Statesman. He has won the Best American Poetry series poem award. His first collection, Virtue, Big as Sin, was awarded the Able Muse Book Award and published by that press in 2013. He lives in Pasadena, California and works at the Huntington Library.