By Jim Aitken, with image by Martin Gollan
All faces tell stories but his mean, cultivated look
Is designed to suggest to all his supporters
that he is fighting for them; that he is somehow
the victim of the deep state’s attempt to destroy
both him and them, and hold back shared dreams.
With his turnip-coloured hair and a body made big
by a lifetime devotion to burgers, fast food, fast
love and fast money, the American dream of more
and more at the expense of the world and of other
Americans, he speaks slowly to his frightening fans.
They hear a hate-preacher believing in only his entitlement.
He leads them in denouncing those he deems in his way,
and scapegoats those who may help him win the great prize
he craves, not to serve the masses but to control them;
to change the fake land of freedom to his own crude image.
An image of joylessness, one of vengeance and vendetta
surgically sighted on all those who oppose him. And he
wants power not to heal but for greater discord directed at
his own emptiness. Having never read a book, he loathes
those who have read many. They will surely be on his hit list.
His dull, saggy suits suggest a tragic lack of style and taste,
a dullness born of a dull mind fermented by hucksterism.
Like a spoiled child he must have more – more money, more
power and more limelight. Yet it is all a plaything for him,
a toy he will break then hit out at others at home and abroad.
He is all the ugliness of his nation; of its warped past with the
genocide of native peoples, the slave ships and the racism
that still exists. This pulp patriot claims he wants to make his
nation great again. But this can only be for the bigots, for those
who believe that great means Gilead, the embodiment of fascism.
