A Lie Repeated Often Enough

As the shutdown stretches on

Trump
tonight at 9:00 PM Eastern Time

through his second-favorite medium
of television

will be making his case
for the border wall

but he's wasting his
and everyone else's time

because he could just say
the wall was already built

and sooner or later
(probably sooner)
he and his supporters
would believe it.

This poem © 2019 Emily Cooper.

Trump Said It Best

Says Trump MAGA-nanimously

in all caps:

"HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE, INCLUDING THE HATERS 

AND THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA!

2019 WILL BE A FANTASTIC YEAR

FOR THOSE NOT SUFFERING

FROM TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.

JUST CALM DOWN
AND ENJOY THE RIDE,
GREAT THINGS ARE HAPPENING FOR OUR COUNTRY!"

For once

Trump invented something good

as Trump Derangement Syndrome

is a great name

for an affliction

although in actuality

its primary sufferer

is not the media

but the president himself

for holding hundreds of thousands

of jobs hostage

in the hopes Democrats will indulge

his penis-size metaphor. 

This poem © 2019 Emily Cooper.

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.