Republican Ramble

Here he comes, Professor Trump

from the University of Himself,

talking Cleveland, cleaving the land,

making America grate again,

like that other professor Harold Hill

talking trouble in River City,

selling the spirit of 76 trombones, selling

the Brooklyn Bridge, his paper moon, his flim-flam.

Part Elmer Gantry, part rainmaker, part

P.T. Barnum, parting the sea, partitioning the border

to keep out the nasties, 
those bad eggs that Humpty-Dumpty dumped

and no king’s horses can put back together again,

only he can do, can do, only the Donald can do.

Look, children, he is Paul Revere sounding forth his

trump-trump that shall never call retreat 
but Durante says Dat’s no trumpet, 
just some tin horn rocking the boat.

Yet he knows where the grapes of wrath are stored,

hears the grumble and the grunt and has the map

to the promised land of milk and money.

He says money makes the world go around, he says,

she’s fat, she’s bloody, she’s a loser, she’s Pocahontas

while he lives in a tower, babbling testaments,

chapter and vice versa godforsaken revelations,  

waxing biblical for the choir, shooting off his mouth

for the trigger-happy ‘cause anything you can do

he can do better, talk-trashier, bash bashier,

strut swaggier and boast brashier.