Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
The palace of Versailles:
Earthly power gone awry
The monarchy absolute
of the people heedless
Then the plebs got resolute
and royals died headless
An action that ought to inspire
in any empire gone haywire
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royals = here: In 1793 Louis XVI, and his spouse Marie Antoinette were, among others, executed during the French Revolution
Aren’t facts just too complicated, taking too much time & effort to uncover & verify? Do I need anyone to tell me what MY facts should be? Surely, fairer & easier for each of us just to make them up as we need them:
Read about them in the tabloids
plied by ‘anything goes’ hacks
Elsewhere commonly called factoids
dressed up as we need them ‘facts’
The Net thrills in profligacy
of excitement refulgent
Be it doubtful efficacy
enabling those indulgent
Who’s got guts to be resolute
sort out all that’s annoying
in these our sweet times dissolute
brimmed with the innate, cloying?
Hence we spill what pops into mind
as insight of reflected kind!
On the election of Donald Trump:
Why not a Prez buffoonish
for this Nation Exceptional
where politics cartoonish
discourse rarely conceptional?
Weary World, do save your breath
Trump shall keep up wreaking death
In 2016 Hillary Clinton treated voters like neglected dogs, which even so should somehow be expected to happily wave their tails at her. After all one of her slogans mightily presumed: “It’s her turn!’. Some of these long suffering dogs bit her instead.
While low were voter expectations
So what? Been so for generations
Bleak, tawdry that election
discourse stuck inchoate
while she was the selection
of Israel, Kuwait
Worn people like soggy dogs
tails tween legs, buzzed by fleas
on muddy slippery slogs
shook off Hillary’s bees
Campaign’s debates were largely disingenuous
the candidate’s grip on Reality tenuous
Written originally just after the 2016 Trump & Pence election:
A Nation deeply embroiled
directionless & despoiled
Prez-elect narcissistic:
a bully chauvinistic
His VP pietistic:
prim, clean cut, jingoistic
In tawdry turmoil
they’re each other’s foil
In historic campaign brashest
nation’s figurehead now vile gargoyle
premonition neo-fascist
to which in cowardice we recoil
Entering frayed fantasy
we’re dragged into anomie!
+)
-anomie = a state characterized by a breakdown or absence of social norms and values
-foil = a person or thing that makes another seem better by contrast (although how could it work in this case?)
-gargoyle = an ornament consisting of a grotesquely carved figure of a person (though here perhaps a carved figure of a grotesque person?)
After having captured Government
Big Business criminogenic
in stealthy coup of empowerment
ethics withered cryogenic
Erstwhile Earnest Citizen
turned Craven Consumer
Now Fantasy’s Denizen
selfish in ill humor
So now we’ve been trumped
back to Poor Serfs bumped
+)
-serf = here: a person doing undignified work at a callous corporation paid far less than his or her contribution to productivity
The clueless White House ambit
emanates from Empire’s
odoriferous armpit:
Absurd acts of ‘high wire’
This (must we not suppose) is:
National psychosis
with full free fall prognosis
by brashest hypnosis
Trump aggrandizes
fantasizes
He tantalizes
scandalizes
Done with can’t-help-himself flair
brazen cruelty laid bare
Nation’s strength faded
politics corroding
consumers jaded
Deny it’s imploding
While ‘debate’ mired mindless
still roars contentious
in pervasive blandness
madly pretentious
Clinging to the Empire notion
slapping on more burnout lotion
That not so veiled U.S. threat
of militant action
dim term but still Beltway’s pet
while crises gain traction
But aren’t those ‘options’ always
foregone on the table?
Restless warhorses upraise
to bolt from the stable:
Galloping for regime change
as Empire’s fables derange!
While the grass is thought to be greener
on the other side of the fence
the barking dog there may be meaner
How do such fantasies make sense?
The Human Race is in dire distress
because we constantly want more
Always way too willing to aggress
so we can further up our score
Mired in constant complaint
as we know not constraint