KYSO Flash
Knock-Your-Socks-Off Art and Literature
Issue 12: Summer 2019
Poem: 295 words

Hollow Be Thy Name

by Robert Eugene Rubino
 

Our grifter whose art of the Fox-spun spiel 
loaded with ego overloaded with id 
out of context without conscience 
whose aggrieved entitlement 
whose flatulent fraudulence 
became our American Tragedy 
hollow be thy name 
hateful is thy kingdom 
of racist misogynist 
xenophobic homophobic 
ranting raving 
trumped-up anger 
here & everywhere on earth where 
your knee-jerk anti-science arrogant ignorance 
as public policy shamefully mining misery & corruption 
cruelty your credo confining 
children in cages 
you give us each day our daily dread 
of bullying bravado bullshit 
of denying or ignoring facts 
of  flaunting acts 
of mendacity high & low 
oh forgive us for in the future near & far 
you’ll be reduced to trivia in every bar: 
who’s the “populist” who lost the popular vote? 
who’s the subject of Commander-in-Cheat? 
who’s the only prez in pro rasslin’s hall of fame? 

Lead us no more after 2020 and deliver us 
from your narcissism your pathology 
go away retreat retire go back 
under the rocks of unreality TV & steal estate deals 
from which you floated bloated 
like a toxic beach ball 
deceptively at first appearing harmless even perversely playful 
cartoonish buffoonish idiotic patriotic pompous ass 
your neck red with resentment your klan-white face your gas-flame blue eyes 
let’s not forget your swept-back combed-over orange-yellow mane 
as lame as your qualifications such as they are 
limited to masterful mimicking of Il Duce gesticulation manipulation 
well you know how he ended up strung up 
upside down in a public plaza 
by those who’d once been swayed by his swagger 
or you probably don’t know since reading & history 
are beneath & beyond you & your demonizing 
morally cracked compass 
your compassion-clogged con 
your junk fool mentality. 
May our American Tragedy end 
the sooner the better. Amen. 
 
Robert Eugene Rubino’s
Issue 12, Summer 2019

poetry has appeared in The Esthetic Apostle and The Write Launch and is forthcoming in Raw Art Review and Forbidden Peak Press. His prose has appeared in Hippocampus, Cabibi, and Elysian Fields Quarterly, and is forthcoming in High Shelf Press. For more than thirty years he was a daily copy editor and weekly columnist on various newspapers. He lives in Palo Alto, California.

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