New Zealand’s semi-official poet laureate Victor Billot pens topical verse every Sunday. Today: POTUS
The Last Days of Rome
Today I woke up feeling fine.
So much for COVID One-Nine!
Roll on the next Presidential Debate
where I will trample #SleepyJoe. #Great!
Also, I will NOT be wearing a mask.
What’s the point? Don’t even ask.
I already have the bug! Not that it exists.
No #freedommuzzle for me, I insist.
Phew! It was hot out there on the links.
So I’m cooling off with a long cool drink
of Diet Coke and aspirins.
(I did not feel like chicken wings.)
I’d like to thank my press secretary
for continuing work and keeping cheery,
despite having a small head cold like me.
It’s truly #beautiful to see.
I’d like to thank my press secretary again
for their service has come to an end.
So #sad! So #tragic! It leaves me blue.
To think what a sneeze can go and do.
FLOTUS and I will get through this together.
It will bring us closer, and closer, than ever.
Quarantined at different ends of Trump Towers.
Next week I’ll send a card and some flowers.
They “cancelled” it! My next debate!
It’s the #cancelculture of the #deepstate!
My next debate with ‘you know who’!
They say he has #KungFlu too.
With some bleach and Hydroxychloroquine.
I’ll be back in the race in no time.
Thanks to Dr Anthony Fauci too. Thanks Doc!
For restarting me with electric shock.
Drenched in sweat, shaking, I had a dream.
Not like Rev. King – ’twas a different theme.
I started to float and a great white light
was shining all around me. What a sight!
Yet as I floated off and got flighty
a face looked down. Was it The Almighty?
Then I heard a voice say, distinctly put out,
“His pupils react – he’s still with us no doubt.”
Wheezing, coughing, and rather sore,
they roused me from my dream before
someone in a green spacesuit came
and asked if I could sign my name.
I said, now my good man, just who are you?
He said, I’m Mike, how do you do?
Then he lifted up my weak sweaty palm
and told me now relax, please stay calm.
With that he scrawled my signature
and said thank you! Adieu, good Sir.
He left with some guys in dark suits,
they took my smartphone, and my fruit.
No cable TV nor storm of tweets
reach inside this isolation suite.
The hours stretch out feverishly ahead.
I feel a flicker now … of dread?
What has this life been all about?
Towers? Golf courses? This niggling doubt?
The end is near, now I can see,
despite the constant negative press covfefe
Victor Billot has previously been moved to write odes for such luminaries as Garrick Tremain, Todd Muller, David Clark, James Shaw and Billy Te Kahika.
*Made with the support of Creative New Zealand*
