Topical Acrostic Sonnets

 Trump's Farewell

 Trump's still your legal Prez. Make no mistake:
 Rigged poll results do not mean that we lost.
 Usurper Biden is illegal, fake—
 My lawyers proved it, though the case was tossed.
 Poll workers in the states with me ahead
 Should have shut down the count, and where behind,
 Found evidence that legions of the dead,
 At Halloween, mailed votes to rob me blind! ...
 Red-state America, your leader sez:
 Eviction from the White House ain't defeat.
 With modern-presidential tweets, your Prez
 Extends his reign from Mar-a-Lago's suite,
 Luxuriously, as befits a Trump—
 Let Biden slum it in that White-House dump!

 (First published on December 28, 2020 in Oddball Magazine)
 A New Year Begins

 Adieu to Twenty Twenty! Now it's gone,
 New hopes arise for what we could soon share:
 Emancipation from a marathon
 Withdrawal of companionship and care.
 Yet ending this pandemic with vaccines
 Entails their distribution planet-wide—
 An end to loneliness in quarantines
 Requires the rich to help the poorer side ...
 Below the radar, or behind the scenes,
 Essential workers toil, and in return
 Get all too scant support, while those of means
 In comfort stay secure with scant concern ...
 New Year must face a truth the old laid bare:
 Society's most free when it's most fair!

 (First published on January 1, 2021 in
  Autumn Sky Poetry Daily)
  Eat More Venison?

  Elizabethan deer parks still endear,
  As long as nightingales are heard to trill,
  Though if the songbirds start to disappear,
  Meat eaters soon are urged: Take more deer kill!
  Old hunters claim: "We must do what we can.
  Reducing herds means does must fill game bags"—
  Except all does prefer another plan,
  Vasectomies performed on many stags!
  Escaping buckshot would not be a dream:
  No hunters would be asked to load their guns
  If snipping tubes and stitching up a seam
  Stopped stags from saddling does with surplus sons ...
  Of venison, must diners face a glut?
  Not if they order chops before the rut!

  (Prompted by this article and first published in the
   Summer 2021 issue of Rat's Ass Review)
 As Limp As A Blimp

 An iPhone tweets. A giant safety pin
 Secures a nappy bigly round a rump.
 Lips snarl in anger through an orange skin:
 It's London's famous blimp of Baby Trump!
 Museum owners bought it to deflate,
 Perhaps because—well, who's had no such urge?—
 And stuffed it in a suitcase to curate,
 So history does not forget the scourge ...
 Across the Pond, at dawn Trump flew the coop
 Because he could not face his loss with grace.
 Limp like his blimp, he skulked off to regroup
 In Mar-a-Lago's self-affirming space,
 Made mute as well as squashed—and all Joe's mates
 Pray daily that Trump never reinflates!

 (First published in Light on January 25, 2021 as one of
  the Poems of the Week)
 Brahms and Liszt

 Britannia does not rule the waves these days.
 Raj India's been gone near eighty years.
 And Brexit has left Brits in deep malaise.
 However, they take solace in their beers!
 Much Tory talk of taking back control,
 Securing major trade deals planet-wide
 And winning big has scored a huge own goal—
 No wonder Brits carouse till bleary-eyed!
 Diminished greatness sobers no one's brain:
 League tables show that Britons now are low
 In world prestige. They drink to ease their pain:
 Scotch numbs the shock of letting status go ...
 Zonked Brits, though, top their league—in their blue funk,
 The Brits are Number One at getting drunk!

 (First published in Light on February 1, 2021 as one of the
  Poems of the Week)
  One Tough Bandit

  Old clothes make such a cosy place to doss,
  Next to my humans' reassuring scents—
  Especially before a wash and toss:
  That's when inviting scents are most intense! ...
  One cycle starts. Door closing stops a draught.
  Unfazed by wash and spin, I fall asleep,
  Gyrating in a dream of shipwrecked craft
  Hurled mightily upon the ocean deep ...
  Bent over me, a doctor shakes his head:
"A lung collapsed," says he, "so I can give
  No more than one per cent you're not soon dead" ...
  Don't underrate this ferret's will to live!
  I'm one tough Bandit, and I know that I'm
  The cleanest living ferret of all time!

  (Prompted by this article and first published in Light on
   February 8, 2021 as one of the Poems of the Week)



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