A Limerick Sampler

It all began in May 2017 with a few limericks about Mike Pence, who then seemed at times on the verge of replacing Trump. On September 17, 2017, the adventure, with Limerick 155, reached its conclusion. These short poems comprised many subjects, including my suffering heart. Below is a selection from the limericks most focused on Trump.

Please note that this is not the Trump of his second term in office. In 2026 (when I’m adding this comment), the 2017 iteration, destructive as it was, can almost seem quaint and silly.

Limerick 143

We lie on our couches with our televisions on

And each newscaster takes us back through the wrongs –

Crimes, gaffes, horrors, outrage –

Of previous casters, previous days.

Why does this country continue to allow this

Lummox (and worse) – President? We would like to think this

The only question. Though

Will we, when the current reality show

Ends, still be lying on our couches with our televisions on?

10.5.17

138

Many Presidents, or their allies, elections results have falsified.

Many Presidents, pre-election, with foreign governments conspired.

We rightly accuse Trump of self-obsession, treason and other crimes,

But what of Nixon, Bush, Kennedy, Reagan, and plenty before their times?

We reserve Lincoln’s tired bed

for those who’ll stop at nothing

to get ahead?

9.30.17

135

The Senate would pass a bill that experts and voters hate

Trump would alienate allies to rally his shrinking base

Others (such as Hitler) have already shown

How, with capital’s backing, enough discord can be sown

So fury and business interests a whole country can deface

9.27.17

127

Everywhere we see the signs: enough is not enough –

Billionaires cheat the government to fatten their stuff;

Famous writers are happy for products to shill;

For presidents greedy people foot the bill.

O daily the crimes rich and poor essay;

But what’s left of the news appears quite unchanged.

Gadgets notwithstanding, life continues rough;

There’s death! – I want more!! – enough is not enough!!!

9.19.17

118

Trump’s hair brush asked him, “Are you having fun?

Or do you wish this election you had not won?”

“Well, it does seem a President never stops being tried.

Into my life and my friends, all my actions they pry.”

“Before you were a criminal, and now you feel like one?”

9.10.17

113

About Trump and related infirmities much is being said –

As before his fingers approached buttons for warheads

And before he could pardon his criminal friends

And erase progressive policies with the stroke of a pen

And not help the working classes but their bitterness spread –

As before destructive forces elected him President

Of a swamp we might call crazed, criminal, incompetent?

Which, with so many lying in it, has become our feculent bed.

9.5.17

111

Steve Bannon, Mike Dubke, Michael T. Flynn

Become names on a list of the people not in

With the Mooch and the Spice and Sebastian Gork –

Ah Priebus and Higgins and Michael C. Short

And one Dahl and one Walsh and a McFarland (KT),

And Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Derek Harvey

Now back up the van for Trump and his kin!

9.3.17

§ Here Are the Top Officials in the Trump White House Who Have Left, New York Times, updated as of August 26, 2017, and thus ignoring Keith Schiller and . . . ?

91

Just seventy-five self-absorbed years ago

With Allies the US united to raze the globe

The Nazis and murderous others were vigorously suppressed

Humane rights and humane structures were loudly professed

But now, allies the US needs its own savagery to slow

8.14.17

67

From their pool across their lawn the humans dripping pawed,

A grill cover from a woodchuck to violently withdraw.

He knew little of cooking, even less of crime,

But the cover’s burnished red was pleasing to his eye,

And, like many in power, but one truth he saw:

Strong teeth are nine-tenths of the law.

7.21.17

§ Based on a story New Jersey friends told me of a woodchuck in their backyard.

45

If a system can elect a President incompetent and unstable,

Is the system for electronic times no longer suitable?

Or are we again learning – flaws fundamental –

Celebrated rights and checks less legal than financial,

With our public resources ever enriching the venal,

And public-trust-worthy chiefs and lawgivers more rare than exceptional?

6.29.17

37

By aggressors ruthless, results unexpected

The lives of many countries have been deflected

From Russia we’ve been sent a feckless leader

As Germans once east sent comrade Vladimir

Extraordinary actions – sequelae long regretted?

6.21.17

16

If you of covfefe a limerick can’t make,

Your limericking license must be a fake.

This special code word,

More sad than absurd,

Means “shut the fuck up for God’s sake!”

5.31.17

14

For appearances, ads, conversation –

The sad game has a name—dissimulation.

Should I too honest be,

What will people think of me?

To be Trumped is the fate of the nation.

5.29.17

— Wm. Eaton The drawings are also by William Eaton.

For the complete collection of Limericks, and if a reader should be interested in the various notes that were appended to some of the poems:

• Part I (Pence, Trump, Mueller, Capitalism) covers May 16, 2017 until July 1
• Part II (Injustice, Trump, Illness, Poetry): July 2 to August 12
• Part III (Animals, Capitalism, the News, First Impressions): July 2 to September 3
• Part IV (No nation on Earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals): September 4 to September 17

And check out various cousins: Oh, say, can you see . . . ; The only show left in town; or Despondent White House Criminals Should Look Up, Trump, de Tocqueville, Democracy, Materialism.

I note further that one of the inspirations for this limerick project was the series of Nixon cartoons that Philip Guston did in the 1970s. For more, see Guston Presidents Cartoons Questions?