Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Truth Alone Triumphs

At a press conference
in India today

Trump of course
remained focused on affirming the rights of Muslims
to live freely without persecution in the country

admonished Prime Minister Modi
for his citizenship law

and said that he experienced
"serious regret"

after the US Supreme Court ruled in favor
of the recently-revised "public charge" rule

that now makes it harder for immigrants
receiving certain kinds of non-cash benefits
like healthcare assistance
food aid and housing subsidies 
for more than a year
to get green cards

upon realizing that it probably would've excluded
people like his grandfather
from immigrating to the US.

Then Trump woke up
from his fever dream

and back in ours
also known as reality

said of Supreme Court Justices
Sotomayor and Ginsburg

“I just don’t know 
how they cannot recuse themselves
from anything having to do with Trump
or Trump-related"

mischaracterizing Sotomayor's criticism
of the appellate process
catering to the federal government

as an attack on himself personally.

Whew!

This poem © 2020 Emily Cooper.

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Commuting to 2020 (Haiku)

Fox News here's a thought.
Bring on Kellyanne Conway
to spread a new lie:

Trump's bipartisan
for commuting the sentence
of Blagojevich.

This poem © 2020 Emily Cooper.

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Curb Your Understanding

There's people who don't get
well-done satire

and then there's Trump's almost satirical-seeming
misunderstanding of such

when on Monday
he retweeted an expletive-filled scene

from Curb Your Enthusiasm

in which Larry David
after almost hitting a motorcyclist with his car

puts on his MAGA hat

to de-escalate the situation.

The motorcyclist
seeing the hat
and believing the two
are politically kindred spirits

calms down and tells David
simply to be more careful next time.

Trump captioned the scene
with "Tough Guys for Trump."

But in an earlier scene

David uses the hat

as a "people repellent"

to get out of playing golf
with his manager
who doesn't want to be seen

with a Trump supporter

then wears it at a sushi bar
so he can enjoy a meal
by himself.

As for Trump supporters
who watch the show

David didn't care
too much about them
being alienated
by the episode

saying in an interview
(in almost haiku form)
“Alienate yourselves.
Go go and alienate.
You have my blessing.”

This poem © 2020 Emily Cooper.

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

State of the Sand Dunes

At Trump's hopefully last
State of the Union address

don't drink every time

the POTUS tells a lie

or praises himself for something good that happened
that really would've happened anyway

or remarks on his
slightly-less-than-half-the-country
approval rating

or brags about him
and the country
emerging triumphant
from a so-called "witch hunt"

or you'll get alcohol poisoning.

Instead think about how

sand dunes of the same height and volume
when put into a rotating tank
with enough water flow
to move the particles

will initially move at different speeds

due to the upstream sand dunes
"communicating" with their downstream neighbors
"I need my space."

After that
having found their places
180 degrees apart from each other

the two dunes
move at roughly same speed.

Then think about
how this applies
to American politics

and realize
that people of all stripes
and with opposite views
that will remain such

perhaps had to repel each other
before coming to the same conclusion

that someone
anyone else

should be in charge.


This poem © 2020 Emily Cooper.