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Where Virtue Dies
In the city of Washington, where virtue dies
in the immoral sewage as it putrefies,
those who tell the most brazen, despicable lies,
and accumulate sound bites that self-aggrandize,
trade their souls in for power that they exercise
for their personal profit, to no great surprise.
The cream sinks, and the demon-possessed instead rise,
who then feign that they care when they hear anguished cries.
Press releases and speeches materialize
and although no word written or uttered is wise,
every word is revered by their evil allies
who just long for a meaningless Pulitzer Prize.
Past the Beltway, where virtuous cream can still rise,
those who say what is plain to those with open eyes
are soon labeled as Nazis to stop their outcries,
but if that’s not enough, there are FBI spies
who entrap those who speak, and who criminalize
all the wholesome behaviors their masters despise.
But we’re seeing now how the Deep State unifies,
since the orange and virtuous man terrifies
all the devils whose immortal souls necrotize.
He shrugs off their attacks and he won’t compromise
since his only objective is to sanitize
and then empty the swamp, so that virtue can rise.
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Word Salad Bar
The things I say to you just may
__sound strange but you will find
word salads are the way I say
__the deep thoughts in my mind.
I firmly state, and advocate
__for what Roe v Wade meant.
My right’s innate to terminate
__a late-term President.
I’m Border Czar and borders are
__a relic of the past.
When borders are all left ajar,
__we’ll be secure at last.
If kids feel out of place and doubt
__they’re wonderfully made,
they can without consent cut out
__some parts and make a trade.
Things once seemed clear but now that we’re
__refined, men have the right
to domineer, despite their gear,
__true women in a fight.
Once I have planned throughout this land
__all prices everywhere,
I’ll always keep the prices cheap,
__but store shelves may be bare.
I won’t be nice if you vote twice,
__I’ll throw away the key.
To be precise, you’ll pay a price,
__unless it’s twice for me.
If you’d just see the world like me
__then you would understand.
The DNC and me will free
__you when I’m in command.
Land of the Free will be for the
__brainwashed who will repeat
“The DNC knows more than me.
__I trust in the elite.”
All those who hate every red state,
__and also those who are
progressive tools or commie fools
__will love my salad bar.
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Warren Bonham is a private equity investor who lives in Southlake, Texas.
Warren, you have written two exquisite political poems that portray the present political landscape in admirable detail and with arrows sharply hitting their targets. The use of “necrotize” is inspired word usage in the first poem and one of the many examples of adept word choice. The satire of the second poem is like a scythe cutting grass. These are two of the best of the many excellent poems I have read that you have gifted us.
Thanks for the read and I’m glad they hit home with you! The second one in particular was fun to write but it hurt my brain trying to think like her.
“Word Salad,” in the voice of the Democrats’ La Vache Qui Rit candidate, is very effective. Although the real woman is basically inarticulate, here you have made her lucid enough to reveal the contradictions and hidden motives of our Deep State rulers. A vote for Kamala is a vote for enslavement clouded over by incoherence.
“Where Virtue Dies” is interesting and amusing, but the use of monorhyme can be somewhat grating if it goes on for too long. Luckily in this case, English has a great many -ize suffix verbs, yet if you had managed to make use of “vise,” “size,” “guys,” and “pies,” you might have avoided some of the repetitions in the piece.
As you point out, it’s hard to write in Kamala’s voice while still trying to get a point across. I had to season the word salad with a little artificial coherence. Thanks also for the feedback on the monorhyme front. I’ll keep polishing that poem (but I won’t inflict it on the group).
What a blast to read a poem that must have been inspired by Bob Dylan’s frequently-used rhyme scheme (a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a- . . . .)! I thought that made it a lot of fun. (I could imagine Bob’s voice singing it.)
“Word Salad” is quite clever, too. “To terminate / A late-term President” is a wonderful play on words.
I’ve always been a Dylan fan – he definitely rubbed off on me. You picked my favorite line from Word Salad. That was the line I started with and it went from there. I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Warren, when I first read “Where Virtue Dies,” I didn’t notice it is monorhymed. Meaning and syntax are clear; repetition of the same end-of-line sound makes little difference when readers find that kind of logical flow in a poem of interest. And as it stands, you’ve already made use of Joseph Salemi’s suggestion to employ varied words of the same rhyme. In 24 lines, you have only five “-ize” verbs (never in consecutive lines) along with “prize” as an “-ize” noun. You use “-ies” as singular verb and plural noun. You use “-ise” as noun, verb, and adjective. And there is “eyes” as an outlier, just as much as “guys” could be. There is plenty of variation in grammar and spelling to avoid monotony. This is crucial to success in monorhyme, because readers experience poems far, far more by reading silently than by reading aloud, or by hearing a poem read or sung to them. Sight perceives spelling distinctions, and thought perceives distinctions in grammar and syntax, even if unconsciously, as in my first reading.
But more important is your choosing monorhyme in relation to both the meaning of the poem (that virtue “dies” in certain contexts), and to its most significant image (the highly valued cream that should naturally “rise”). Therefore monorhyme has a place in the poem’s title, too. You do well with it here.
My little criticism would be what I immediately noticed in the first lines, namely, some slight metrical weaknesses. You’re using anapests, and in that meter there should be a stress on the less important “where” in the first line and “it” in the second–while the important word “virtue” gets no stress, and “IMmoral” is stressed contrary to the “imMORal” of ordinary speech. You can afford substitutions like these almost anywhere in the poem, but in the first lines you are establishing the meter, and I was unsure of your intent. Lines 3 and 4 are perfectly anapestic, so I got it, but it was a slow start. My recommendation to anyone using a meter other than default iambic is to be perfectly clear about it in the first lines, and in the final lines as well. Your last line is perfect, but in the next-to-last, the stress on “to” reads lamely, especially combined with the end-of-line stress on “tize,” because we usually say SA-ni-tize.” Again, this is fine elsewhere in the poem, but here you’re describing an all-important “only objective.”
I must say, you ordinarily do exactly as I recommend here, and I always enjoy reading your poems with their power of well-disciplined measure.
Forgot to say I like Cynthia Erlandson’s reference to Bob Dylan’s monorhymed songs. Dylan uses vocal performance mastery (loud versus soft, long versus short) to avoid a grating effect of rhyme sounds, and as well to emphasize the rhyme words he most wants to catch the hearer’s attention.
Thanks as always for the thorough and thoughtful comments. I had managed to convince myself that the first and last lines flowed perfectly, and they did in my head since I knew what I was trying to do. Definitely a good lesson to clear all of the default settings out of my brain when proofreading.