Make way for the Ugliest American –
this puling, hollow pin.
He ain’t no good Samaritan;
don’t nurse or otherwise coddle him.
This crowd is quite a menagerie
of credulity mixed with fear.
He appears to be as surprised as we
as to how he’s even here.
This isn’t a place for those, my friend,
who do not like the smell of it.
This may be how a world will end,
to paraphrase T. S. Eliot.
A small crowd’s here to clap at all
the empty promises veiled in fog.
Three hours, and already the capitol’s
a dank and miasmic bog,
though he’s said that his reputation will hang
on draining out that swamp.
His world will not end with a bang
but instead with a whimpering trump.