A LIMERICK ON DECEPTION

by Richard Hacken

The tenure at West Point was fleeting

For freshman cadets caught cheating.

When shown to the door, 

They said, "It's no more

Than our Commander-in-Chief did by tweeting!"

Richard Hacken is a librarian-poet with degrees in German literature and past appointments at U.C. Davis, Oregon State, University of Kansas and BYU. He has kissed the Blarney Stone, yet his only visits to Limerick have been virtual.

THE CAN'T-WORRY TALES (EPILOGUE)

by Richard Hacken

Whan that panne-demie with her virrus bittre

the lande with Mericanne courpses did littre,

and swathed thus visages with couvre-masque,

of which vertu for manye was too bigge an asque;

Whan Donaldus (eek!)  with his love for selfe

putte bleech and snaque's oil on ev'ry shelfe

for tendre eldres with prievyus conditiones

held oute to driy at cause of his foul perditiones;

and with electiones at halfe cours yronne,

twentie-milles of lyes he'd alreddie sponne, 

So priketh hem the truth from toe to tooth

which longeth folk to goon to voting booth,

or mail-personnes who neith in raine nor sleete do faile

to delivere ballotts by the U.S. Mail;

And specially from every stayte and districke

of Vespucci-Lande at the urn they pick

the hatefulle, hurtfulle jerke away to sende

that in an SDNY gaol he might justlie ende. 

Richard Hacken is a librarian-poet with degrees in German literature and past appointments at U.C. Davis, Oregon State, University of Kansas and BYU. He has translated Austrian short fiction and the poetry of a Tuvan poet from Mongolia who publishes in German. He claims to have found this Chaucer epilogue in the wash.

ALT-SANTA 2017

by Richard Hacken

‘Twas the Eve before Yuletide, and throughout the castle
Not one gerbil was verbal, nor causing a hassle;
With our stockings suspended on pegs by the mantle,
Soon Santa would see how they gracefully dangled.
All the young ones were snoring in gentrified bunks,
Watching video dream-streams of sweet glucose junk.
My dear spouse and I sought communion with Morpheus,
Having taken our Ambien for slumber’s euphorias…
When our slackening shorter-term memory awareness
Was quite rudely attacked by loud noise from the terrace.
So we sped from the bed and we peered past the shutters,
Overlooking fatigue and dead leaves in the gutters.
Freshly frozen precip was lit up by the moon,
Granting clear luminescence almost like high noon…
When some black SUVs bolted into our view:
Armor-plated V-8s, but not one caribou.
From the middlemost window our eyes were assailed
By the sight of Alt-Santa—with his orange ducktail.
Verbosity surged with some grunts, lies and screams,
And he verbally signaled, with the accent of Queens:
Now, Donnie! Now, Kushner! Ivanka and Eric!
On, Sessions! Melania! DeVos and Rick Perry!
Wait a minute! Where’s Tiffany?
Now, Tillerson, Mattis, Now Zinke and Chao!
On, Mnuchin, Mike Pence, Wait a minute…
Where’s Ben Carson now?
Where’s Comey, where’s Flynn? Where are Priebus and Bannon?
They had useless traits that I had to abandon.
Where’s Scaramucci? Where the heck is Sean Spicer?
I’d have kept all these people if they defended me nicer.
It’s time that the Senate repeals and replaces
Every few days just a few of these faces.”
But that wasn’t all: he continued to chatter
About changes he’d make and how much they would matter.
Yuletide was losing and now it would win!
Yes, he would make Christmastime so great again!
“I’m the greatest,” he said, “of all Santas, I promise,
There’s been no Santa greater, if I want to be honest.”

“For too long it’s been Santa who subsidized
The presents and goodies for all of you guys.
Such liberal nonsense is hard to defend,
And so such generosity now has to end.
We’ll keep shipping the presents and building the toys,
But who’s going to now pay for it? The girls and the boys.
Our Department of Toys on Non-Discounted Clearance
Will be happy to debit accounts from their parents.
Our Department of Homeland-Spun Sugar-Plum Canes
Will be headed by Dr. Alt-Saccharin Gaines,
Who’s qualified, ‘cause she’s a 10, a good looker,
And an enemy of all things resembling sugar.
Our Department of Christmas’s Really True Meaning
Has a new secretary named Skepticus Leening,
Who has promised reducing bureaucratic red tape
Till Christmas can be all dissolved in a lake.”

And thus on and on further the Alt-Santa spake,
Till for so many reasons I started to quake.
I was so good and ready to be Doubting Thomas,
When he said one last time, “If I want to be honest…”

So he heard us exclaim as we turned from his face:
“You're not a real Santa. You're just a disgrace.
You’ll soon be gone. You’ll be put in your place.”


Richard Hacken is a poet-librarian
and a firm contrarian
to the reigning vulgarian.

JASON AND THE ARC OF KNOTS

by Richard Hacken

Image source: DonkeyHotey via Daily Kos

I, the Grand Chair of the House Committee on Oversight,
Enduring my own governmental and dental overbite,
I, Representative Jason Chaffetz,
Never go into raving fits
About being partisan.
No, I am just the leading artisan
Of ignoring with quiet ease
All conflicts of interest and improprieties
That might impinge on any fringe of my own party.
Using gymnastics of justification, quite smartly
I look the other way.

But ask about Hillary’s Benghazi: I’ve got plenty to say.

Still, I’ve decided not to take it anymore.
“Soon" I’m going to pack my beret,
My toothbrush, my blinders and cot,
And make good my getaway.
Why? Well, with T***p and his lot—
All of whom I secretly deplore,
But whose follies I feel I must simply ignore
(As a blandly mocked, land-locked ichthyosaur)—
This task of looking the other way
(Oh-Massive-Distressing-Flames-of-Heck)
Causes a passive-aggressive pain in my neck.


Richard Hacken regrets to inform you that Brazen Jason is technically “his” representative while somehow not representing him.

THE VATICAN'S NEW DECREE ON CREMATION

a sonnet
by Richard Hacken 

The Bios Urn is a fully biodegradable urn designed to convert you into a tree after life. But is it okay with Pope Frances?

New guidelines came out this past Tuesday from Vatican City
Regarding burnt human remains, whether powdery or gritty:

Set them neatly in places that are sacred and Catholic-approved;
They should never be scattered or otherwise randomly moved.
They should not be compressed into dice or shot deep into space:
They were once a live human, so show them the requisite grace.

Don't partition your loved ones (who've suddenly gone caput)
Between Mantua, Aspen and waters just off of Beirut:
Resurrection makes difficult repatriation of soot.

It's more pious to plunk our deceased into boxes beneath
The terrain and to add a memorial ribbon or wreath!

So rather than storing your mom in a crate on the shelf,
Understand the subtext into which such theologies delve:
"If you claim to be faithful, then don't make an ash of yourself."


Richard Hacken has published in TheNewVerse.News a few times. He has also translated into English seven poetry collections of Galsan Tschinag, a Tuvan shaman from Mongolia who writes in German.

CONSPIRACY THEORETICAL WITCH HUNTS

by Richard Hacken 

Image source: Unload and Unwind

            Hillary, it has been shown, created ISIS.
            Everything we know shows how that terror crisis
            Came from Clinton’s wicked wish to sacrifice us.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

            In Libya she only made things worse, because she
            Purposefully waited to send in the posse
            At the embassy when needed in Benghazi.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

            Email servers were her tools of choice for treason
            As she lured and let the spies of the Chinese in,
            Laughing as she lied about her sordid reason.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!
         
            Shocking to our sensibilities as humans,
            Hillary dropped bombs less ethical than Truman’s,
            Pimping out her husband to young female students.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

            Hillary remains untouched by House committees
            Searching hard to bring her down by her Achilles,
            While bribes she paid stack up in banks in offshore cities.
                        It’s not a conspiracy theory
                        If it happened (really)!

Richard Hacken enjoys trochaic political satire.  While slightly amused by conspiracy theories and witch hunts, he hates to see them linked to each other. 

THE LONG REACH OF KARMA

by Richard Hacken

Kenneth W. Starr announced Wednesday that he would resign as chancellor of Baylor University, effective immediately, saying it was a “matter of conscience.” Mr. Starr’s decision came less than a week after he was stripped of the more operationally powerful position of president of the university in the wake of a scandal in which Baylor acknowledged that it had mishandled accusations of sexual assault against several football players. . . . Mr. Starr was an independent counsel whose report to Congress led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. —NY Times, June 1, 2016. Photo: Kenneth Starr speaks to the media after arguing a case on student free-speech rights before the Supreme Court in Washington on March 19, 2007. (REUTERS/Molly Riley via RawStory)

Could some current Norman Mailer
write about the mess at Baylor,
which is so in need of journalistic prose?
Is the football program’s failure
to send rapists to the jailer
going to send it into existential throes?

Football culture says to nail her,
take a woman and impale her
when protected so that any onslaught goes.
Players hope the coach will tailor
strong defense so words will fail her,
and no prosecutor credits what she knows.

In the court: assault and flail her
and with wholesale slurs assail her,
so with craftiness your guilt you can transpose
till she seems a drunken sailor,
and you easily curtail her
own ability to witness and disclose.

With the Baptist creed at Baylor,
there’s no way truth will avail her,
since suspicion on her own sins will repose.

Now the President and Savior
of the football games at Baylor
was Ken Starr, a man to gridiron wins devoted.
Yes, Ken Starr, the Clinton slayer,
the Lewinsky-scandal hailer
(who as Special Counsel over sex tales gloated)
has mishandled accusations
of forced sexual relations,
and for this from president has been demoted.

Oh, they say that fresh raw karma
is a targeted sweet charmer
that is stronger far than energetic speech
and that irony’s sly reach
can shape attitudes and teach
with capacities designed to, well, impeach.

Richard Hacken is a poet and librarian who has published in TheNewVerse.News before. He once introduced X.J. Kennedy to the plenary session of a literary symposium via rhyming couplets, which may or may not have been gauche. 

CARLY'S POLITICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

by Richard Hacken

Image by DonkeyHotey

Ms. Carly Fiorina once ran Hewlett-Packard,
Reaping pay package privileges stock-option lacquered.
Critics say she ran HP straight down to the bottom,
And the Board sent her packing four months after autumn.

With executive branch as next target for Carly,
Sure, she lost the primary, but proved herself snarly.
So Cruz tabbed her for VP and heaped her with praise,
And at that announcement she fell off the stage.

After Carly’s VP gig in utero aborted,
A new world record for her was reported:
She had set a new standard of debacle perfection
By losing two times in the selfsame election.

Richard Hacken, an ultraviolet Soul politically trapped in an infrared State, has never been in Hackensack.  A librarian and poet, he has translated the poetry of Galsan Tschinag, a Mongolian poet who writes in German.