The Love Song of Donald J. Trump
Superbia, invidia e avarizia sono
le tre faville c’hanno i cuori accesi.
~Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto VI
Let us go then, me and I,
When the moon is severed in the sky
Like a journalist’s head upon a table.
Let us go, through well-deserted offices
In muttering retreat,
Out to my own wretched hotels
And steakhouses with ketchup bottles:
Greed allows us to ignore the firmament
Of our own insidious intent
Like we ignore any overwhelming question. . . .
Oh, do not ask what I’ve debased.
Let us go and grab and taste.
In the White House, I come and go
Talking of a taco bowl.
The orange flesh that rubs its flab against the nation,
The orange breath that rubs its muzzle on the nation
Licked its tongue into the mouth of the Mississippi,
Tasted her long line up her tightening banks,
Let fall upon its buds the sweet grease of her chains,
Slipped by the voters, made a sudden leap,
And seeing the Electoral College, and the hate,
Tweeted thrice around its Tower, and fell asleep.
In the White House, I come and go
Dreaming of Mar-a-Lago.
But of course there was no time
To wonder, “Do I dare?”, and, “Do I dare?”
No time to turn back up the escalator,
With a bald head and one winding weave of hair —
(They will say, “How his hair flaps in the breeze!”)
My MAGA hat, my six-feet-two-inches of insecurities
Deflect attention by criticizing other people’s bodies,
(They will say: “But how he jiggles above his knees!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the Twitterverse?
In 280 characters there is room
For bad and worse that will take a generation to reverse.
For I have tweeted it all, already, tweeted it all:
Have tweeted the evening, morning, afternoons,
I have measured out my life in retweets from buffoons;
I have heard their hunger, most of all,
Starving for themselves, and for gloom.
So how should we consume?
And I have known the lies already, known them all —
The lies that fix you to any rage whatsoever,
And when I am agitated, yawping on a stage,
When I am hacking up ingredients of a brawl,
Does this fiction not assuage?
Lies are empty calories; you could eat them forever.
And how should we consume?
And I have known the harm already, known it all,
From Charlottesville to Pocahontas:
America, you said you want this.
Is it your wanting of something vicious
That makes me grant your wishes?
Are you not drooling in your feeding stall?
And how should we then consume?
And how should I end?
Shall I say, I have gone into the pageant dressing rooms
And watched the garments that fall from the contestants,
A man lonely in tuxedo, poking out of trousers?
I should have been a pair of bitty thumbs
Scuttling across silent touchscreens.
Oh, but the tweets, they chirp so ceaselessly!
Loosed by my stubby fingers
Slick with grease from chicken wings,
Stretched on the floor, here beside empty wrappers and me.
Should I, after fast food and Russia and ISIS,
Have the strength to lead this country through a crisis?
But though I have mocked and lied, mocked and lied,
Though I have tasted Khashoggi’s head brought in upon a platter,
I still profit — that’s all that matters:
Not black lives, not transgender lives, not reporters, not the sick,
Not those in shithole countries, certainly not immigrants.
And I tweeted, and they died.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the silver spoons, the towers, golden toilets,
Among the many younger women, to let some truth spoil it,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten my tongue, to sound less senile,
To have admitted to even one single fault
To have knelt before some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Humpty Dumpty, come from the wall,
Come back to say Mexico won’t pay after all” —
Instead, settling a red cap on my skull,
I say, “That is not what I meant at all;
That is fake news, that’s all.”
No! They say: I am not Prince Putin, nor was meant to be;
I am a traveling huckster, one that will do
To sell a fantasy, play a scene or two
In oversized clown suit; laughably flawed,
A tangerine comic-book villain, playing a role,
Or a carnival barker, or serpent-booted salesman,
Or Bible-toting grifter, or save-your-soul
Televangelist dangling machismo like a talisman —
Forever, at all times, the Fraud.
I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
Shall I plate myself in gold?
Shall I part my hair from everywhere? Do I dare to be impeached?
I shall wear wide red ties, and evoke a swollen leech.
I have felt the women shuddering, reach to reach.
I do not care if they will reach for me.
I have seen children riding toward me through the sand
Sweeping the dust out of their hair blown back
Where shadows of the wall twist sun from orange to black
As I linger in my tower on an island bought for beads,
Eating KFC and tweeting with the TV on,
Dreaming up con after con after con.
