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A Screw ‘Em Sermon
for Government-Anointed Experts
“Political language… is designed to make lies
sound truthful and murder respectable, and to
give solidarity to pure wind.” —George Orwell
Dish up linguistic picnics
Just shy of one pork pie.
Make fruitful news so nutty
All rationale will fry
In lands of clouds and cuckoos
Where pigs and pop stars fly.
Heed the politician’s rule—
Push the lie and play the fool.
Reveal your wheel is turning
Although your hamster’s dead.
Make sure your tongue keeps spinning
Though nothing’s in your head
But tumbleweeds a-tumbling
And drivel laced with dread.
When fretters sweat, stay icy cool—
Push the lie and play the fool.
Loose the mob of kangaroos
Locked in your top paddock.
Spill a pool of fishy schmooze
Pungent as a haddock.
In shiny shoes spew loony views
All puffed up like a peacock.
Pitch to every useful tool—
Push the lie and play the fool.
Flummox, fox, and obfuscate,
Bloviate with keenness.
Sell free speech as harm and hate,
Cash in on your meanness.
Claim that men can menstruate
And women have a penis.
Peddle all that’s crass and cruel—
Push the lie and play the fool.
When your reputation’s shot
By deeds too dire to mention,
Serve a double dose of rot
With haughty condescension.
Snort and sneer, then off you trot
With your colossal pension…
While successors play the fool
Guzzle cocktails by the pool.
First published in Snakeskin
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Susan Jarvis Bryant has poetry published on Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online. She also has poetry published in TRINACRIA, Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems anthology, and in Openings (anthologies of poems by Open University Poets in the UK). Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition, and has been nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize.
Well, you’re certainly on point today, Mrs. Bryant, and there’s so much more on which to opine…what a stimulating piece! No caffeine for a few hours, remember, Mike’s on your side. 🙂
Thank you, Mark. I thoroughly enjoyed writing this one. The majority of today’s politicians beg to be called out in a bit of taunting, tongue-twisting satire… I simply can’t resist.
I love this hilarious poem, Susan, which also happens to be as observant and truthful as it is witty. Your gift for poetic devices is on full display here with a plethora of slimy, unpleasant, vacuous images and some much earned vitriol for “experts” who are really just snake-oil selling entrepreneurs — only worse, because they influence government policy. Lawyers are well-familiar with the zoo of professional experts out there who offer their “services” (i.e. their flexible “expert opinions”) to the highest bidder. It’s amazing how they can take one position on one case and then the opposite position on a different case. They help ruin an already overtaxed and unfair legal system and they erode public trust in a hundred different ways. If it’s not corruption then it’s narcissism or incompetence. Then, as you so wittily and bitterly observe, they’re off to guzzle cocktails at the pool. Experts for hire is a bad system.
Excellent work, Susan!
Brian, I always look forward to an astute and entertaining comment from your good self and this one has me nodding and smiling. This explains my outrageous poem to a tee, beautifully:
a plethora of slimy, unpleasant, vacuous images and some much earned vitriol for “experts” who are really just snake-oil selling entrepreneurs…
I’m wearing the words as a badge of honor!
Brian, thank you very much indeed!
Susan, I love “Flummox” and “Bloviate” which instantly created an image of the blonde buffoon himself. I plodded on to the end with just one coffee-spluttering moment with the “p” word in stanza four. A most observant and cutting-edge piece with yet another nail hit firmly on the head.
Jeff, I’m laughing along with you… the ‘p’ word is unavoidable in poems about cocky politicians and the blonde buffoon is a cocksure calamity of the highest order. And to think, I used to admire him for his intellect… I think his brains have slipped into his britches. Thank you very much for your hilarious comment and for your appreciation of my poem… it simply had to be written for April Fools’ Day!
Susan, you’re the unchallenged queen of assonance, internal rhyme, and alliteration. What would happen if you took over as Biden’s press secretary?
Your final couplet may have poetic precedents–you or others probably know. It makes me think of the Air in F from Handel’s Water Music and the theme from the 4th movement of Mozart’s Divertimento for String Trio, where the end of the opening period returns near the end, only to be succeeded by a new concluding phrase
Julian, what a great comment… a comment which sent me straight to the beauty of Handel’s fine composition to fully appreciate exactly what you mean… wonderful!
I’d love to take over as Biden’s press secretary. There would never be a dull moment, and I’d reveal the hoodwinking hucksters at the Whitehouse quicker than wildfire… sadly, my new job would be up for grabs quicker than a politician could tell a lie.
With unmatched, uncanny accuracy you unmasked once again the current sociopolitical menace of our times! The Big Lie(s) lives on, not only in the predictions of George Orwell, but in reality. Free speech is no longer free, while the haters spew invective and are the ones who actually are committing hate speech against the rest of us.
Roy, your observations are so true… what a wicked world we live in. Thank you very much for your perspicacious comment and your constant support… it means a lot!
An incredibly descriptive poem which would be very funny if the subject matter weren’t so dire. Thank you Susan. Your work is amazing and so appreciated by those of us who are awake.
Norma, thank you, and I agree – if the truth didn’t hurt so darn much, we’d be laughing a whole lot more. You are most certainly fully awake, and it is a pleasure to suffer alongside someone with 20/20 vision and a sense of humor… two great tools for staving off the constant barrage of lies flying our way daily.
“Make sure your tongue keeps spinning /Though nothing’s in your head.”
This is a great way to approach a serious subject humorously. Good truth and sarcasm, Susan!
Cynthia, thank you very much indeed. I had great fun writing that line… it came all too easily. 😉
I send pictures like that to him on the outside of the envelope, some of your lines I’ll have to include on the next one.
Feel free, Wayne… I hope the lines hit home… though I have a strong feeling they won’t. Thank you for your comment.
Susan Bryant, if this were the only poem you had ever penned, you’d still be the absolute top satirist in the Anglophone poetry world today.
The epigraph from Orwell is utterly ice-cold in its raw truthfulness. From Soviet commissars, to Nazi gauleiters, and to lying CDC bureaucrats, apologists for mass murder have always posed as respectable and benevolent “experts.”
As for that jackass General Milley, let’s see how his army of CRT-trained, proper-pronoun-using, non-binary soldiers does in the next war against an enemy force of real men.
Joe, I am over the moon with your appreciation of my poem. Thank you very much for encouraging me to continue.
Also, these words are utterly chilling:
From Soviet commissars, to Nazi gauleiters, and to lying CDC bureaucrats, apologists for mass murder have always posed as respectable and benevolent “experts.”
These words would sit well at the top of my poem on halting hospital homicides. When those we’ve grown to trust turn out to be monsters, it’s tough to take. Sadly, the world seems to be full of them in this day and age… or have they always been there and managed to keep themselves hidden? Now my eyes are open, it’s impossible to ignore them. I feel the burning need to address every single one of them.
This is really good, with your stunning images and usual sound-repetition tactics from which I’ve learned so much. I saw it in Snakeskin and hoped you would publish it here, too. It’s especially nice to see some humor after that other one you just published.
My favorite lines: “Claim that men can menstruate/And women have a penis.”
Josh, I’m thrilled you enjoyed the poem. A bit of humor amid the horror is a must. I laughed out loud as I wrote your favorite lines… the sad thing is, who would have thought our world could get so wacky… and so wicked?! Josh, thank you!
What a lovely April fool’s poem, thank you Susan!
My absolute favorite lines are
“Reveal your wheel is turning
Although your hamster’s dead.”
The whole poem is very delightful in it’s observations of current cultural suiciety.
Yael, it’s always lovely to hear from you. It’s wonderful to hear you enjoyed the poem, and I just love the portmanteau: “suiciety”… it says it all… shockingly and creatively. Thank you!
Sensational as always, Susan. I can’t think of a more worthy target for your remarkable talents than that vile parade of hacks, narcissists and bootlickers commonly referred to as the “expert” class. You’d be hard pressed to find one problem facing the western world these days that wasn’t at least exacerbated, if not completely manufactured, by them. There are so many wonderful turns of phrase in your poem, but “drivel laced with dread” perfectly sums up the output of these vermin.
Shaun, thank you for your wonderfully encouraging comment. I completely agree with every word you say on “experts”. I hope the majority have woken up to the fact that the word ‘expert’ when used in the same sentence as ‘government’ is synonymous with lies huge enough to change the course of history.
Mmmm … I wonder what Milley has to say now that it’s been proven that China was able to collect information from that spy balloon. He also played dumb at a recent Congressional hearing, claiming he didn’t know drag shows/story hours were going on at any military bases. Huh?
“Push the lie and play the fool?” Indeed!
Outrageous, Cheryl! The problem is no one seems to care… could that be because it’s too darn late to do anything about these lies? I hope not.