Portrait of Donald Trump as Poet Transforming into a Creature from Out of a Francis Bacon Painting

Sometimes I feel like I’m several billion dollars
worth of tax free income but all you want to do
is kill my high. Like I’ve just had a
poetry reading in an elegant theater,
attended by three hundred people,
which for poetry is big, it’s huge, but
all this guy with a poetry blog publishes
is a blurry photo of some sad bar where
ten drunk guys are nursing their craft beers
while I stand alone in a corner reading
my magnificent poem about how great I am.
That’s not how it’s supposed to happen.
And that’s why I didn’t have some other poet
read his work at my inauguration because
I’m the only poet worth reading nowadays
and I was too busy to read my own poems
while being inaugurated as the forty-fifth
and best president ever that day so screw you.
It’s because of people like you that I’m
going to have to build a wall around
Rae Armantrout and make her pay for it.
I’m also going to build a wall around my
drug dealer because where the hell is my
cocaine? Where are the big league hookers
peeing on my ex-wives’ four-hundred dollar
shoes, where is my steak made from the
best American cows, oh there it is, it’s
over-cooked, it’s disgusting, but I love it.
Where is the symphony I paid you to write
for me, Philip Glass, the one called
Donald on His Amazing Beach, you say
you never made a deal with me, that’s a lie,
I’ll have you deported. I don’t care if you
were born here. I have very big hands. I’m
Donald Trump and your advice is over-rated,
your comfort none of my concern; your desires
are not my desires so do whatever I tell you
and pay attention to my beautiful words.
I’m Donald Trump and you’re an errand boy
sent by illegal aliens with marked disabilities,
get out of my American hotel. America, there’s
a thorn tree in the garden if you know just what
I mean; I’m going to send it back to China,
I’m going to finish eating my steak. America,
I am in my painted heaven where harps and lutes
adore me; I lie between the young bride and
bridegroom, I call this land from shore to lake
to shore my home. America, I live in my terrific
penthouse surrounded by strong walls
trimmed with gold as I walk on floors made
of lovely fluid and precious stone. America,
I live in the White House, which they
used to say really belonged to the people
or some shit like that but it’s mine, now;
be great and get over yourselves, be best
and put your hands in the air. So, here I am,
America, here I am. Feed me, America, feed me
cheeseburgers and Diet Coke on Sunday afternoon;
America, I’m really a lizard, feed me flies, feed me
crickets, feed me small frozen mice. America,
I’m thirsty, bring me water, just point the hose
down by my desk; I’ll lay down on the floor of
the oval office and absorb it through my skin.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua