THOUGHTS OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT

as He Languishes with Dementia 

at Age 83 in the Year 2030

by Albert Haley

                            

Disgusting. Corrupt. Liars!

Who is Melania?

Really, Junior, again?

Tower, tower, tower.

Haters. Where’s Vlad?

Make America grate?

Gold plated and Colonel KFC.

How to spell anything.

Perfect. Ivanka. If she weren’t

my daughter.

Was a time I could have shot someone.

Right in the middle of Fifth!

Wall, we were going to have.

What happened Tim Apple?

Gold plated wall. Good!

Have I said “pussy” yet?

Where’s my phone? Sad.

Me, me, me, my country tis of me. 

Do you like this hair?

In the middle of Fifth.

Put a tariff on it.

Put a businessman in 

the White House and acquit him.

They rip babies out of mothers

and smother them. Bullshit!

Sharpies predict the weather

better.

But who is this Mitch? Why do I miss

him. Lyin’ Ted sure knew how to lie

down with the lion. Good crew,

kept their heads off the pikes.

  

Greatest hits. Rallies                                                  

and media is enemy of the state.

Some people say. Snow falling. 

Told you it was a hoax. 

The earth’s cooling—me too?

If they’d only respected

the Second. Right in the middle of Fifth. 

Might have spared me 

(A-l-z… how you spell?) this.

The focused hot blowtorch

of hatred so carefully cultivated. 

Main act in the middle of their circus.

Cancel the failing show

with a ratings bang.

Obama? Birth certificate?

Never saw it. Get him out of here!

Highest form of love

a man like me can ever know.

Albert Haley's poems have appeared previously in New Verse News, Poets Reading the News, and Rattle. He lives and teaches in dry, dusty Abilene, Texas, which at present seems far away from any refreshing blue waves. Haley's poems have appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, and Rattle. He lives and teaches in dry, dusty Abilene, Texas, which at present seems far away from any refreshing blue waves.

HAMILTON STILL SOLD OUT ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY

by Albert Haley

"History is happening in Manhattan: Hamilton has set a record for the most money ever made in a single week by a Broadway show."—The New York Times, November 28, 2016. 

That autumn a silver-haired man came
to see what was so highly rated.
The dancing, rapping, the black and brown
bodies bodiced and laced to build
a country from the pink soles up.

It wasn’t the livestock show
at the Indiana State Fair
or Peyton winning Super Bowl XLI
for the Colts stolen from Baltimore.

It wasn’t the cars going around
and around the Brickyard, spewing
fumes on Memorial Day.

It wasn’t even poor James Dean lying
beneath a marble slab in Fairmount
in the shadow of his uncle’s pig farm.

And it sure wasn’t talk radio,
Sunday pass the collection plate
church, or after home-school
milk and cookies. Not a goddamn
Oreo in sight.

Of course, the silver-haired man
knew this, only wanted credit
for trying to love the Founding Fathers
before being Secret Serviced out.
Dust rising, dust settling.

What did they think would happen?
It’s theatre. The show goes on.

The hills still alive with the sound
of that new music, the bold story
that must be sung.

A time-told tale that unleashes
rhyming tongues, night
after night, with men and women
who dance joyfully, freely on the graves
of any who might wish to enslave.

Albert Haley is a past winner of the Rattle Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in the Texas Review, Poems & Plays, and other journals. He lives in Abilene, Texas, which is as odd of a place as it sounds.