36 Comments Post your own

ArtsSmart says:

September 13, 2024 at 3:24 pm

I vowed not to put anything political on my Facebook feed, but that was just too damn funny!

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Bob Shepherd says:

September 13, 2024 at 3:36 pm

OMG.

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Lloyd Lofthouse says:

September 13, 2024 at 3:43 pm

Vocals from a malignant narcissist who gets his daily 30-second security briefings from Putin and QAnon followers, while ignoring the FBI, CIA, DOD, ONI, CGI, and INR.

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- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  September 13, 2024 at 10:47 pm
  
  yup
  
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Bob Shepherd says:

September 13, 2024 at 4:55 pm

(15) Facebook

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retired teacher says:

September 13, 2024 at 5:19 pm

This was about the only opportunity VP Harris smiled during the debate. She was probably so happy and relieved Trump fell for this bogus right wing nonsense, and it made him look ridiculous. Trump deserves the lampooning.

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quikwrit says:

September 13, 2024 at 8:56 pm

This should be the Democratic Party’s theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2VBBJLhRz0

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- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  September 13, 2024 at 9:35 pm
  
  lol
  
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- deteremineddespitewp says:
  
  September 14, 2024 at 4:46 am
  
  The oldesters kick back! Warms my mid-70s year old heart.❤️
  
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Ben East says:

September 13, 2024 at 9:05 pm

Hand on heart, i just linked to this brilliant send up! So great.

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Bob Shepherd says:

September 13, 2024 at 9:41 pm

Trump 2024 Campaign Slogans

Please vote for me. Otherwise, I go to prison.

Why just documents in the toilet? Why not the whole country?

Making America Grate Again

TRUMP 2024: 20 for Obstruction of an Official Proceeding. 24 for Seditious Conspiracy

MAGA: Moscow’s Asset Governing America

Trump: The Man with No Plan and the Tan in the Can

Trump, the Relapse

Back to the Future! Way, Way, Way Back!

Trump: For a Whiter House in 2025!

Vote for Trump or He’ll Stomp His Foot, Hold His Breath, and Throw a Plate of Food at the Wall

Grab ’em by the Ballot!

Cuckoo Coup Redo

If I Lose Again, Again, It’s Because It Was Rigged, Ha Ha

Because He Doesn’t Give a Shit about You

No One Believes Any of This Bullshit I’m Saying, but People Vote for Me Anyway

Because You Just Can’t Get Enough of Me, Am I Right?

Because Everybody Is So Grateful That I Took Away Women’s Control over Their Own Bodies–the Lawyers, the Pundits, Women, Donnie Jr., Jim Jordan, Hannibal Lecter

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- deteremineddespitewp says:
  
  September 14, 2024 at 4:38 am
  
  Sadly most of them sound like reasons why a lot of folk are voting for him.
  Once upon a time what Trump says was only material for MAD magazine.
  
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 14, 2024 at 5:56 am
    
    IKR? Where is Alfred E. Neuman when ya need ’em?
    
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  - deteremineddespitewp says:
    
    September 14, 2024 at 12:15 pm
    
    Much missed. Sadly though ‘What Me Worry?’ just doesn’t fit into today’s discourses.😟
    
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 14, 2024 at 1:02 pm
    
    THIS
    
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Bob Shepherd says:

September 13, 2024 at 9:42 pm

Work on my epic novel about the life of Donald Trump

Remembrance of Things Ass

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- deteremineddespitewp says:
  
  September 14, 2024 at 4:36 am
  
  😄
  
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Bob Shepherd says:

September 13, 2024 at 10:00 pm

O Donnie Boy 1 (to the tune of O Dannie Boy)

O Donnie boy, your hate campaign has faltered.
Your prospects fall like dye down Rudy’s cheek.
Another loss looks like it can’t be altered.
Then you’ll be jailed. Your prospects sure look bleak.

Will you be back, once Kam’la’s term is over?
Will Princess Sparkle run then in your stead?
Will you o’ercome and roll again in clover?
Well those cloud castles, Donnie boy, are made of lead.

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- deteremineddespitewp says:
  
  September 14, 2024 at 4:36 am
  
  Lovely lament. It even stands up to having Trump’s name pollute it. More good work Bob 👍
  
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Bob Shepherd says:

September 13, 2024 at 10:20 pm

Donnie’s Secret (or the advantages of being a Russian asset)

To the tune of Close to You

Why do toadies
suddenly appear
to take your part
and kiss your rear?
You’ve got the dirt.
They won’t desert
but stay close to you.

Why do Pugs,
like Pence’s fly,
stick like glue
despite your lies?
To please the rubes,
all’s down the tubes
to be close to you.

On the day that you were born, the demons got together
and they larded you with vanity and vice.
Now no matter how extreme the cost,
you won’t accept you’ve really lost.
You’re lice.
How nice.

Life is grand;
it’s milk and honey
with Putin’s intel
and Putin’s money.
It’s easy, dear,
if Vladimir
is close to you.

You’ve got an angle
you can dangle
if he’s close to you.

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- deteremineddespitewp says:
  
  September 14, 2024 at 4:34 am
  
  I wonder if this has been picked up, translated into Russian for Putin to sing to himself in the shower, or when signing off on another list of arrests?
  
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 14, 2024 at 5:57 am
    
    What a visual!!!
    
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  - deteremineddespitewp says:
    
    September 14, 2024 at 12:18 pm
    
    With a horrible clarity I can see it.😧
    
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 14, 2024 at 1:02 pm
    
    Haaaaa!!!
    
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Bob Shepherd says:

September 13, 2024 at 10:24 pm

Abecedarium for Donnie

Trump, as Trump will tell you, is the best. I quite agree. He is, of politicians, the most

abhorrent,
amoral,
anti-democratic,
arrogant,
authoritarian,
autocratic,
avaricious,
backward,
base,
benighted,
bloated,
blubbering,
blundering,
bogus,
bombastic,
boorish,
bungling,
cheap,
childish,
clownish,
clueless,
common,
confused,
conniving,
corrupt,
cowardly,
crass,
creepy,
cretinous,
criminal,
crowing,
crude,
cruel,
dangerous,
demagogic,
depraved,
devious,
dim,
disgraceful,
dishonest,
disloyal,
disreputable,
dissembling,
dog-whistling,
doltish,
dull,
elitist,
embarrassing,
erratic,
fascist,
foolish,
gauche,
gluttonous,
greedy,
grudging,
hate-filled,
hateful,
haughty,
heedless,
homophobic,
humorless,
hypocritical,
idiotic,
ignoble,
ignominious,
ignorant,
immature,
inarticulate,
indolent,
inept,
inferior,
insane,
intemperate,
kakistocratic,
kleptocratic,
laughable,
loathsome,
loud-mouthed,
low-life,
lying,
mendacious,
meretricious,
monstrous,
moronic,
narcissistic,
needy,
oafish,
odious,
orange,
outrageous,
pampered,
pandering,
perverse,
petty,
predatory
puffed-up,
racist,
repulsive,
rude,
sanctimonious,
semi-literate,
senile,
senseless,
sexist,
shady,
shameless,
sheltered,
slimy,
sluglike,
sniveling,
squeamish,
stupid,
swaggering,
tacky,
thick,
thin-skinned,
thuggish,
toadying,
transphobic,
trashy,
treasonous,
twisted,
ugly,
unappealing,
uncultured,
uninformed,
unpatriotic,
unprincipled,
unread,
unrefined,
vain,
venal,
vicious,
vile,
vindictive,
vulgar,
woeful,
xenophobic,
yellow-haired like a troll doll, and
zymotic.

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- deteremineddespitewp says:
  
  September 14, 2024 at 4:32 am
  
  Wow. You are on a roll here. I am in awe.
  
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Bob Shepherd says:

September 13, 2024 at 10:32 pm

Donald Trump

That self-made man
who built his wealth
with one small loan from Daddy
of more than half a billion to
his little Scottish laddie.

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Bob Shepherd says:

September 13, 2024 at 10:43 pm

The Prognosis for Poetry in the Age of Tan in a Can | Bob Shepherd

If I could speak
If I could speak in these lines
If I could speak in these lines in the old, high manner,
austere and pure as a mountain spring
before the days of polyvinal chloride,

If I could speke with the tungis of aungels,
If I could conjure King David, Orpheus, Taliesin, Oisin, or Shakespeare to speak for me,
If I could speak as even these never spoke,
still, my voice would be as that of the shade of Willie Yeats, in a crowd of thousands at a MAGA rally,
reciting in that one small human voice some ancient fragment—“Ich Am of Irlonde” or “Westron Wind,”
into the uncomprehending blare of rock music and lies from the main stage.
“In Spingfield, they’re eating cats and dogs.”
No Muse is equal to the news,

None is equal to the pee tape,
to the Black Friday sale on smart speakers,
to the trailer for Venom, to Stormy and the Bunny,
to sweeping forests and nuking hurricanes
and Cheez Whiz now in a convenient aerosol spray.

How, exactly, is one to make poetry of such tatter?

How does one speak to such an age, in its language,
and call this poetry?

The rhythms from the drum machine, though crude and mechanical, are more insistent, easier to remember,
than were those danced around ancient campfires.
They are designed, in fact, scientifically, to persist in memory,
like scars on the tissues of the brain,
making it impossible even to hear
a melody from Chopin or Liszt.

If I could speak true in such an age, my voice would be that of one who has awakened during surgery, paralyzed,
who sees and hears and feels it all–
the surgeon’s saw parting flesh and bone–
and screams and screams but cannot be heard,
who looks, to the one taking her apart, as oblivious as a chump before Trump on a stump.

Oh, yes, I could make poems.
I could make this, for example.
But if a poem is spoken where no one hears it, is it spoken at all?

Suppose one with greater powers than I wrote a true poem today.
Would it be a ridiculous anachronism,
like an Apple watch on the wrist of an extra playing a gladiator in a Hollywood Rome?
It seems that way. It seems that a poet, today
is like a moth that has flown through a door left open by a cook who stepped into the alley for a smoke,
a moth who has gotten treacle on a wing from the pear flambé
and is stuck and circling madly on the edge of a plate in the servers’ window.
However much you might shout at the fellow at the Genius Station in the Apple Store (Do these still exist?),
there are some things that, once broken, cannot be fixed.
Does she know this, that moth?
That some broken things cannot be mended?

I think, sometimes, that poetry has had its run.
The greatest ever written are now as unknown
as the child who dies crossing the desert at the border of the Untied States of America.
All the poems? All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
at one fell swoop?

But then, a child is born,
and her breathing, her inspiration and expiration,
Her beating heart, systole and diastole,
synchronizes with the voice of a mother who remembers some lullaby her mother’s mother sang,
and I think of Kamala
and of the monks at Skellig Michael,
in the times we are not now supposed to call the Dark Ages,
the monks in their stone hovels by the cruel North Sea,
copying manuscripts by flickering candlelight,
with hands raw from the cold,
and holy, holy, holy,
keeping learning alive
until a better time.

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- deteremineddespitewp says:
  
  September 14, 2024 at 4:31 am
  
  Spell binding, and with the power of a storm. You’ve just blasted the shallow words of the followers of Trump over the hills and far, far away.
  Keep those coming Bob.👍
  
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 15, 2024 at 1:19 am
    
    Thank you so much, Determined. This means a great deal to me. It’s the only feedback I’ve ever received on this poem.
    
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  - deteremineddespitewp says:
    
    September 15, 2024 at 4:05 am
    
    ‘Comments’ in the …err… ‘Comments’ box can often get overlooked, particularly if folk live by the ‘Manage Your Notifications’ bell (A habit I will have to stop, I should read more feedback on a post that’s caught my attention)
    Anyway:
    My wife is the poet in our house and in consequence by association I come into contact with poetry.
    “The Prognosis for Poetry in the Age of Tan in a Can” to use another style of metaphor just came out at me, grabbed me by the lapels and said ‘READ’. The power in this deserves to be read, its raw-boned thunderous eloquence is the style needed at this time when the fate of the USA as a united nation and a democracy is in the balance.
    Put these words out on your own blog, or whatever other feed you might use. Just put it out there.
    Keep up this GOOD work. ✊
    
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 15, 2024 at 7:40 am
    
    Long ago, a young woman wrote William Wordsworth and asked him why he didn’t try his hand at one of the romantic novels of the type coming out of Germany. He wrote back and said he was going to stick to poetry because it had such a large audience. And indeed, Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson–these were bestselling authors in their times. I don’t know what has happened to the audience for poetry, but it’s piss poor now. And a lot of what passes for poetry is just awful. I read and write poetry and short fiction, and I know a number of first-rate poets and short story writers. Most are barely read. Magazines generally don’t publish short fiction anymore, and major poets are published in editions of 200 copies that are sold to the poet’s mother and a few libraries. Meanwhile, there are plenty of folks ready to go see the next movie for adults based on a comic book superhero–that is, based on the comics that I thought were the bee’s knees WHEN I WAS NINE YEARS OLD.
    
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Bob Shepherd says:

September 13, 2024 at 11:44 pm

OK. This is an old one.

Rudoloh, Don’s Brown-Nosed Reign Dear | Bob Shepherd, December, 2019

(to the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”)

Rudolph the Ghouliani
had a very brown, brown nose,
squandered his former goodwill,
stroking Trump on TV shows.

All of the other Trumpties
used to laugh and call him names.
Even those abject toadies
thought him crooked and insane.

Then one Foggy Bottom eve,
Trumpty called to say,
“Rude one with your nose so brown,
won’t you take Joe Biden down?

”What happened then’s sheer folly:
thanks to lows the two men reached,
history will most remember that
Trumpty Dumpty was impeached.

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- deteremineddespitewp says:
  
  September 14, 2024 at 4:28 am
  
  Nice! 😄
  
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deteremineddespitewp says:

September 14, 2024 at 4:41 am

This a true gem. Demolishing Trump and his (redacted).
I didn’t scroll down all of the Youtube comments, but I didn’t see any far down that disagreed with the video or ranted against it.

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LG says:

September 15, 2024 at 5:52 pm

I have recently discovered The Kiffness and his perennial favorite, “I Go Meow.” It’s become one that we play over and over at my house. I won’t be sharing this one, however, out of concern for those of Haitian descent who have been harassed in Springfield and in other places. The publicity has caused a lot of “hate-criming.”

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