Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
The Great Turnip is telling lies
that nobody, surely, not even his microphone, can believe.
At each big fib, some innocent hope dies,
and in this court of contempt there shall be no appeal, no reprieve.
Behind him, several ranks of suits,
indistinguishable, or not worth bothering to try to tell apart –
policy weasels, money monkeys, legal brutes –
pose as his Praetorian Guard, mannequin-stiff and wardrobe-smart.
Are they for real? Are they on wheels?
Their naked faces betray nothing: when a smirk is disturbed,
an eyelid flinches, or a tremor steals
across a rigid jowl, the flicker of indiscipline is promptly curbed.
The Turnip has printed one of his lies and signed it.
He holds up the tainted piece of paper for all the cameras to see.
To show they’re not just behind him but behind it,
the phalanx claps in unison, they are a glee club oozing glee.
When the charade is over, what next?
Outside, a line of identical limos snaffles them one by one away,
leaving the Turnip to fire off a text:
Fix me a new bunch of stooges by tomorrow. This crowd were so yesterday.
•
The Great Turnip
has all the qualities of leadership:
he is great, good, big, smart, excellent, outstanding, and totally hip.
Charming as well,
plus cool and charismatic, he casts a spell
on all subgroups – male, female, whatever – within his fan base or clientèle.
His sex appeal
is something even the dogs in the street feel.
If they could vote – hey! his popularity ratings would be beyond real.
He loves to play a crowd
that’s willing to be wowed
when he tells them how top he is, and terrific, and tremendously endowed.
Among his speeches
have been some genuine peaches:
ripe, and riper than ripe, fruits of a self-belief that nothing outreaches.
By such magniloquence, he impresses
any mob he addresses,
whether it be of bankers and bimbos, or trolls and trillionairesses.
The main message seems to be
that in all history
there has never, ever – no, not once – been a leader so completely leaderly.
•
Who is the enemy as of now?
The Great Turnip must decide.
He’s feeling tough, he’s feeling snide,
he needs an international row.
Flexing his rhetoric for a fight,
as a true-born xenophobe
he can choose from the whole damn globe,
but the choice must be just right.
Recent spats have ended in doubt:
for a while, the Evil Panda
justified his righteous dander,
till things somehow fizzled out.
Same with Foxy, first friend, then foe,
then friend again, who makes him ill,
refusing to keep nice and still
so he can land that killer blow.
The Hot Countries? There’s a thought.
Where everyone hates everyone.
That could be a lot of fun.
That could be a lot of sport.
Safer, though, to pick on folks
that simply like a quiet time:
inhabitants of a mild clime,
whose leaders are pathetic jokes.
What’s that place where they all speak
foreign? Different foreigns, too!
That will definitely do.
He’ll send the troops in – oh, next week!
•
The Great Turnip tweets.
His tweets are feats
of verbal facility
and thumb agility
in equal measure:
each tweet a treasure
of wisdom compressed
into the best,
truest and smartest,
most genius opinions
you ever read.
The greatest tweet artist,
living or dead,
the world has known,
he keeps his trusty phone
shooting off all day,
with plenty to say
not just to his minions
and so-called advisers
(not one as wise as
he happens to be),
but to you, me
and the rest of humankind.
His all-embracing mind
(think of a boa
constrictor) is more
tenacious and tough,
and grasps more stuff,
than most encyclopedias.
It would be tedious
to attempt to summarise
this brilliant guy’s
philosophical views:
his theory of the news
continues to make fools
of most schools
of rational enquiry;
but the fast, furious, fiery
nature of his tweets
sweepingly defeats
all pedestrian inspection
and pusillanimous objection.
Speed-tweeting rules!
•
Does the Great Turnip ever feel regret
about past misdemeanours? You bet!
Oftentimes, in the dark night of the soul,
comes back to him a missed putt at the eighteenth hole
of some lushly landscaped Scottish course:
a memory that never fails to bring remorse.
Not exactly what I meant. Let’s try again.
Will the Great Turnip admit to any time when
he acted wrongly? Sure! No business mogul makes
big deals without occasional mistakes,
like not screwing the other party hard enough,
acting too nice and above board, that sort of stuff.
I fear we’re at cross-purposes. Let me ask outright
about a scandal recently brought to light…
Oh, yeah! You mean the night he shared a pillow
with that porn star? Call it a peccadillo:
he should have paid her more. No whore respects
a john who’s niggardly when buying sex.
Unfortunately, though, some moral constraint
overcame him. That’s what it’s like to be a saint.
•
When the argument grew heated,
the Great Turnip tweeted:
It’s in the Bible. God gave us the gun.
Since when did a gun harm anyone?
OK, people get killed, so why didn’t they run?
They’re losers. Know what I’d have done?
Shot the guy. Bang! End of story. Gun
bless us and give us our daily fun!
•
The Great Turnip is planning to punish the press,
who have caused him such distress.
They are all wicked, all liars,
all godless and unpatriotic Turnip-deniers.
Bad people. Sad people. Both.
They need to be cut out like a malignant growth.
It must be done for the nation’s health,
and by stealth.
First to go, the guys who draw the cartoons –
those midget buffoons.
He doesn’t even look like that!
They can’t draw, their jokes are feeble, so he’ll squash them flat.
From the depths of his petulance, the Great Turnip releases a roar:
It’s not funny any more!