Some virus must be making its rounds.
Why else would someone sick suggest that you
Replace Ben Franklin on the hundred-dollar bill?
Could be a plague, wouldn’t you say,
Orange-Faced mafioso don, that or
A case of incurable sycophancy,
The like of which no vertebrate has ever known.
You said in your inauguration speech
America should expect a golden age.
In honor of your achievements to come
A retainer has put you up for a Nobel Prize
You’ll be the first to get one for selling out
A heroic people fighting tyranny.
Other well-wishers want your birthday
To become a national holiday
Or your mug added to a monument.
Usually a golden age stands for peace.
Prosperity and a flourishing of the arts.
Yours would represent the destruction of hope,
The banishment of justice, cruelty
Against the poor and helpless, racism
Triumphant, the end of the Republic.
Still, you’re on your way to a golden age,
One supreme in lies, money-worship, and minds
Imprisoned in delusion and deceit.
Wait, there must be some mistake. You’ve confused
Gold with gilding, the false with the real thing.
That golden age of yours won’t be gold at all.
It will be brown and stink to heaven’s height.