“…The Stirring, Unmistakable Patriotism of the Velociraptor…” -- senator Mike Lee

There is a guy elected to congress,

Who stands in front of everyone

and talks about patriotic dinosaurs

of which (against their lizard brains

and overwhelming hunger) let a human,

the forgotten messiah of his party,

Ronald Reagan, ride upon its back.

The old movie star with crude oil hair

Is depicted wielding a machine gun, 

with a rocket launcher strapped to his back. 

I thought about the victory garden 

of irony which is this political party's fruit 

and labor. How that early bird ancestor

would become a few drops of gasoline

in the tank of a senator’s stretch limousine;

how it and its band of hunters might have eaten

an entire political party if the artist's rendition

had allowed for a time machine. How, the animal

would no doubt choke on our cartooned air

if we brought the beast forward to our time,

or even stopped in 1984, to visit the president

and let him ride the blood hungry dino.

Another flower from the irony garden? Reagan

is no doubt firing his machine gun and defending

his United States from all Russian attackers,

something the fantasy-filled senator will forget

next time he votes not to protect our voting systems,

or votes down the sanctions against oligarchs

and their campaign contributions. See, all you young,

impressionable revisionists: history is easy.

© J. P. Dancing Bear

Sen. Lee Uses 'Photo' of Reagan Riding Velociraptor, Giant Seahorses in Floor Speech Mocking Green New Deal

J. P. Dancing Bear - [Twitter: @jpdancingbear]

J. P.'s most recent book, Fish Singing Foxes, is out by Salmon Poetry this month. His next book, Of Gods and Monsters, later this year from Glass Lyre Press.

Heroic Ode for The American Resistance

for CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times & all those

who hoped the Mueller report would be the thing

Rather than fight the man-child from Orange

on the metres deep concrete of his actual crimes,

you did battle with your size twelve dress shoes 

gallantly planted in quicksand – just now grown suddenly

ravenous – or failing that in the largest serving 

of Jell-O and ice cream since Christopher Columbus 

showed up to tell America he’d discovered it.

Given the chance you’d have stood pluckily before the jury

and – neglecting to mention the shortcomings 

in his approach to childcare –accused

Josef Fritzel of bad carpentry; courageously focussed

on Elizabeth the First’s bald patch and not her public 

disembowelling of her critics; fearlessly 

taken issue with Peter Sutcliffe’s driving

and not what he did to those women

with his menu of hammers and screwdrivers;

dared take to a radio talk show to criticise the late Adolf Hitler

for his side parting and inability to gather a crowd,

and told the plebs it’s time Franz von Papen rode to their rescue. 

You who heroically blew the bags of Dollars mom and dad invested

putting big ideas into your little skull by trying to convict this wolf

temporarily taken human form of eating the one sheep he didn’t.

© Kevin Higgins


Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Report Is Reportedly More Than 300 Pages Long

Kevin Higgins 

Kevin is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland. He teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the National University of Ireland - Galway Summer School. He is poetry critic of The Galway Advertiser. He has published five collections of poetry. His next poetry collection, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital, will be published by Salmon Poetry in June 2019.