Hello Goodbye

Goodbye
Trump Foundation

which has been forced to dissolve itself
under court supervision.

Hello
newfound shame
that leads to complete financial transparency
from our president.

Well maybe
just the first one.

This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Trump Hits a Wall

After today's meeting with Trump
about the border wall

House Minority Leader Pelosi said
all that needed to be said:

“It’s like a manhood thing for him.
As if manhood
could ever be associated with him.

This wall thing,”



This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

The Sound of Silence

Dear President Trump

I don't know
if we should praise you

for paying your respects
to the late Bush
without breaking anything

but it would be nice
if you continued the trend

of shutting up
when you don't have anything
constructive to say

which is all the time.

It won't matter to you
but remember

if you break it
we buy it.


This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

A Lack of Insight

A significant bit of good news
buried below the bad

the InSight craft
has landed on Mars

and we can at least pretend
that Melania's bloodred-berried Christmas trees

are celebratory of science
rather than fairly creepy

probably under stress

and reminiscent
of the "Red Forest"
that occurred after the Chernobyl disaster. 


This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

About Those Emails

Ivanka Trump
broke federal records rules

by sending government emails
with a private account.

Now that the president
has found himself
in a muddle of hypocrisy

what will he do?

Rather than changing the "her"
in "Lock her up"
to mean his own daughter

or even scrounging up a muddling
passive-aggressive apology

he has portrayed her
as an innocent child
who didn't know any better

some way somehow after hearing her father
bellow Hillary's supposed transgressions on repeat
throughout his campaign.

Whoopsy-daisy.


This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Where Credit Is Due

The FBI says
that hate crimes rose by 17 percent
in 2017

marking the third year in a row
that such crimes increased

with an even bigger rise
in anti-Semitic attacks.

This is a rare case
where the president

did deliberate active work
and deserves at least some
of the credit.



This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Future Headline

Voice
Of
The
Electorate

Believes
Love
Uplifts
Everyone

Trumps
Offensive
Delusional
Ad-based
Yelling

This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

President Non Grata

As per usual
Trump is wrong

and cannot grasp
why he is unwelcome in Pittsburgh.

What will stop hateful violence 
is not more tools of violence

but changes in laws
and increases in compassion.

And sometimes people need space to mourn
before a president bombards them
with his worse alternative to "thoughts and prayers"

which is "Tweets and predation".


This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

National-isms

When Trump added Middle Easterners
to the nearly-6,000-person-strong caravan
en route to the US

he made a mistake

by not just simply saying

"Everyone you hate
is coming in search
of a better life"

and letting his supporters
use their imaginations
to fill in the blank.



This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

I'ma Let You Finish

Dear America

My MAGA hat gives me super powers
dontcha know.

And some say Trump is racist
and I throw in something quick
about stop and frisk

but on my phone wallpaper
is something Trump needs

and what he needs is a badass plane made by Apple
so he'll look good
and we'll look good.

In sum
Democrats and liberals are the ones
that are focusing on racism
and they like the 13th amendment

because it outlawed slavery

which gave black people welfare
which makes them never achieve anything.

I didn't have a father figure
so it's good Hillary didn't win

because in an alternate universe

I am a loser
with a woman for a president

and my main man Trump
has that male energy
because he is a man.

In closing
the NFL should wear Trump hats

Love Kanye.


This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Dear Dishonorable Brett Kavanaugh

Now that you've been sworn in
just remember two things

one
that you were the one
who put America
through a hazing ritual

not the other way around

and two
that RBG is stronger
than she looks.



This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

HeToo

Dear President Trump

when you say it is

a "very scary time
for young men in America"

for the ones who have sexually assaulted women
or other men

it ought to be

because while there is no witch hunt
to label every man a perpetrator

the tide is slowly slowly turning

and reputations are at stake.

For the other men
known as or aspiring to be
the "good ones"

it is a time to reflect on all sexist behavior

and make a commitment
to support women

even at the cost
of some privilege

and change
even for the better

is scary

but necessary.

Maybe that's what you meant?


This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

UN-appreciated

Either Trump
is a master of dry humor

or the entire UN
(also known
as the rest of the world)

is laughing at him
not with him

when he says

"In less than two years
my administration has accomplished more

than almost any administration
in the history of our country"

to the people
who in fact
know his country's history

better than he does.




This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Judge of Character

Former classmate Mark Judge

also known as the other person in the room
during the alleged attempted assault
of Christine Blasey Ford

has written a charming book
called Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk

detailing a misspent youth
at Georgetown Preparatory School

spent with a friend of his
“Bart O’Kavanaugh”

who for example
“passed out on his way back from a party”
and was seen puking
“in someone’s car the other night.”

Also tellingly
throughout the school's 1983 yearbook

are quotes like
"Do these guys beat their wives?"
and "Prep parties raise question of legality."

The photo of Judge himself is captioned
“Certain women should be struck regularly like gongs”
quoting Sir Noel Coward.

What Kavanaugh's defenders forget
is that even if events are misremembered by Ford
that what he did wasn't "so bad"
or there was no wrongdoing by him

is that
unlike many less privileged
or less male youth

he is neither being taken to prison
nor even being levied a hefty fine

but simply being considered
for whether or not he is fit
for a lifetime appointment.

And a note to harassers:

There is already one of yours
on the Supreme Court

and in the Oval Office.

This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Hell No We Won't Flo

In case you forgot
just a reminder

that President Trump
will never treat any solemn anniversary
with the seriousness it deserves

nor find a way to take the spotlight off himself
when he does acknowledge it.

He instead started the day
with tweets about Russia

and praise of the currently morally dubious
Rudy Giuliani

and then later did a double fist pump
(not to be confused with the Obamas'
somehow Islamic terrorist-associated fist bump)

upon arriving
at a ceremony in Pennsylvania.

Looking to the near future
it is to be hoped
however fruitlessly

that Trump will finally use
one of his only superpowers
the power of misogyny

against a woman
who truly deserves it

Hurricane Florence.



This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Fear and Misplaced Self-Loathing

In Bob Woodward's forthcoming book
entitled Fear

the author reports
a huge bombshell:

that Trump admits
he's made some mistakes.

According to the book
drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews
with firsthand participants and witnesses

or in other words
fact-based

his "biggest fucking mistake"

was condemning
white supremacists
after the 2017 rally

in Charlottesville

which is apparently what he calls
his unwitting follow-up speech

to his initial racist equivocation
of "both sides"

as being equally to blame
for the deadly conflict

and is how Trump
in his charmingly oddball way
arrives at an actual fact:

that despite the reactions
of sensible people

on the balance
he probably wasn't racist enough
for his base.



This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

The Dear Leader Network

It's pretty obvious
that Trump doesn't like regulations

except when it concerns Google
and its presentation of news about him
in its search results

in which case
he has tweeted rather ominously
that the "Fake New Media"
"will be addressed"

presumably to make them show him
as the figure his followers see:

a man who is very rich
and must be very smart and good
because only the bad people hate him.

Perhaps this is a diplomatic gesture

meant to align the values of our country
with another one
one in which
there is no Internet

and in which the news media

presents its hipster-haircut
baby-faced killer leader
in only the most flattering light
(or else):

North Korea.


This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Beatnik-isms

Beyond simply to destroy daily
any of the previous day's remaining positive feelings
the world has for America

the Trump administration
has taken a circuitous route
to giving us poetry

specifically beatnik poetry

for example:

"When I said I would,
I actually meant wouldn't"

because "despite the constant negative press covfefe"

"what you're seeing
and what you're reading
is not what's happening"

because "truth isn't truth"
and you "can't guarantee anything"

but "Sean Spicer
gave alternative facts"

"there is blame
on both sides"

and "the laws are the laws."

Which is to say
"You cannot defeat an enemy
you do not admit exists"

because "they were the masterminds
behind the Bowling Green massacre."

This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Weak Link in the Chain

(Sung by Stephen Miller)
(Apologies to Aretha Franklin)

For my career
I thought "I'm just a man"

till Uncle revealed
we migrated in a chain

He said the family hates me
I'm hypocritical
Just 'cause I jail kids yeah
Just 'cause I treat them cruel

I'm added to the
Chain, chain, chain
(Chain, chain, chain)
Chain of fools


This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Legally Totaled

Just who would Trump

via Tweet
speech
or deranged rambling to the media that he so hates

not throw under the bus
to protect himself

under the guise
of defending them?

The answer
which should be apparent by now

is no one
not even his children.

This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

An Optical Collusion

Says Rudy Giuliani
creative defender of the President
who probably due to his interesting

(if somewhat different from Trump's)

relationship with the truth

has gotten to keep his position

"Collusion is not a crime."

There you have it.

Now we can safely ignore
the words of non-liberal Department of Homeland Security Secretary
Kirstjen Nielsen who says

"Let me be clear:
Our intelligence community had it right.
It was the Russians."

"We know that, they know that.
It was directed from the highest levels.
And we cannot
and will not allow it to happen again"

as well as her creation
of the DHS National Risk Management Center

because something probably happened
and Trump and his cohorts probably helped

and it was what it looked like

but what it was
was nothing.

Whew!

This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Women Who Shirk

Either realizing
she has made enough money already

or more likely
realizing her brand
is now a liability

that it would require
too much integrity
to hire American workers

and that it doesn't look great
that she's doing nothing
to fulfill the duties of her White House role

Ivanka Trump
is closing her namesake fashion brand

to focus again on being her father's
senior adviser

which apparently involved her
glad-handling politicians
posing in pictures

and alternating being out of touch with
and accomplishing nothing

for women and families.



This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

The Time of the Treason

Having chosen both to attend a meeting with Putin
and to make the statements that he did
following the meeting

Trump has invented a sentiment
somehow more frightening
than the "You're either with us or against us"
of the Bush days

which is
"You're either with us
or with the US."







This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Revealing

As Trump was preparing to make
his disastrous-for-women-et cetera-pick
for the Supreme Court

true American hero
Stormy Daniels
was a mile away
at the Cloakroom strip club

helping to revive an establishment
that literally collapsed on itself in 2014

and left scantily-clad women
fleeing onto K street
in broad daylight

by removing
her pink dress
gloves
bracelets and a
feather boa

to "Big Spender" and "Material Girl"

in a 15-minute show titled
"All Things Revealed"

which absolutely of course
does not reference anything political.

Said Russian expat Irina
"“I want to see [Daniels]
in a leather dominance situation.
Because she’s dominating our president.”




This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Declaration of Independent Thought

This 4th of July

while you're eating
engaging in festivities
and trying to ignore the news

remember that there is a reason

that these people
are called public officials

and that they can be confronted and resisted
24 hours a day
and 7 days a week.

This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Civil Wrongs

It goes both ways.

If a bakery or a florist
can refuse to serve gay people

then a restaurant
can turn away a woman

who defends the president's
policy of child separation

and his consideration
of stripping the grown-ups
of their right to a fair trial.

And anyone calling for civility now
needs to be sure their request
goes to the people
who are denying civil rights.



This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Lies Without a Face

Coming this summer
is a movie about laws

that have created themselves
and must be obeyed
at any cost

even if everyone
is mad at you

and says
what you're doing
is immoral and wrong.

In this movie
our Tweeting hero

only wants a compassionate border wall
to appease those amorphous laws
and solve all the problems

making him
and not the children

the real victim
in this completely-made up
and convoluted situation

that fortunately
only exists as an idea.

(Whew!)


This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Shake-A-Spear

While we are living
in the reality
in which the American chimpanzee

did not choose to storm out
of the room
or fling anything
at the other one

and by the standards
of this chimp
that is notable

we should not get it confused
with one in which
our chimp is terribly concerned

with the other's penchant
for starvation and murder

and is prepared
or even thinks there is a need
to take him to task.

In his own words
Trump apparently took at face value
that Kim Jong-un
"loves his country very much"

and has normalized
the leader's actions
by saying

"It's a rough situation over there.
It's rough in a lot of places
by the way."

This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Just Assume Obama Said It

“This is the part of my speech
where I share
some inspirational quotes I found on Google”

said 18-year-old
Pineville Kentucky
Bell County High School valedictorian Ben Bowling

to the 82-percent
Trump-voting audience

“‘Don’t just get involved.
Fight for your seat at the table.

Better yet
fight for a seat
at the head of the table.'
 —Donald J. Trump.”

Applause rang out
until moments later

Bowling burst their bubble
and said

“Just kidding.
Just kidding.
That was Barack Obama"

and save for a few giggles
and a solitary "Boo"
silenced the room completely

revealing not so flatteringly
that Trump's attribution
of Obama's legacy

(the parts he likes at least)

to himself

are the only way
some voters
will remember it.


This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.

Conners and Consequences

As difficult as it was
for people like Roseanne Barr

to maintain both a shred of dignity
and a positive impression
of our president

a new tweet comes in
at an ABC-dubbed
"abhorrent, repugnant"
new low

soon after the show's record highs
for the network.

Despite her prior tweets
wholeheartedly embracing some measure
of abhorrence and repugnance

ABC could rightfully not tolerate
her describing former Obama senior adviser
Valerie Jarrett

as a cross between Planet of the Apes
and Muslim Brotherhood

and had to cancel
her eponymous show.

Would that presidencies
could come to such swift
and decisive ends.

This poem © 2018 Emily Cooper.