Posted on 10/17/2013 5:53:28 AM PDT by Claud
Obamandias
I met a traveller from a bankrupt land
Who said: Two vast and empty vaults of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And fly-ridden lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that built that and the heartless Fed:
And on the teleprompter these words appear:
"My name is Obamandias, Kenyan king:
Look on my works, ye Whitey, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that hope and change, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Ha ha! Luckily I had more noble material to work from than when I wrote this:
Impeachment Poem
(A Parody of Maya Angelou’s Inaugural Poem)
20 November 1998
A Fraud, A Deceit, A Lie
Specious boasts each day imparted,
Charms of a charlatan.
The adulterer, who left genetic tokens
Of his tryst here
In our Oval Office.
Any broad, charmed by that lusty groom,
Is accosted in the press with spin and sophistry.
But today, History cries out to us, clearly, powerfully,
Scum, you may stand upon my
Neck and disgrace our founding tenets,
But seek no haven in your legacy.
I will bestow on you no accolades down there.
You, who think yourself no lower than
Ancient kings, have continued too long in
This ruse of maturity,
Have laid too many
And slandered their names.
Your lips’ lying words
Harming our daughters.
The Law cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your disgrace.
Down the mall on the Hill,
A Star sings a truthful song,
Come testify here by his side.
Each of you mercenary cohorts,
Hypocrites and dangerously proud,
Filibustering recklessly in the press.
Your smarmy struggles for this felon
Have left a squalid taste upon
My courts, a sullied blemish on the Presidency.
Yet, today I call you to testify,
If you will cover up no more. Come,
Clad in grease and you will sing the song
The Perpetrator gave to you when you and he
Agreed to profane the truth.
Before corruption was a scummy smear within our
House, and on the news your crew still
Denied it.
The Star sings and sings on.
There is a true burning to prosecute,
This ringing Infamy and lying Crock.
So say the Decent, the Lovers of Liberty,
The Upstanding, the Patriots, the Free
The Honest, the Moral, the Wise, the Just,
The Lawful, the Faithful, the Honest
The Good, the Dutiful, the Righteous
The Pious, the Kind-hearted, the Religious.
They hear. They all hear
The breaking of the Law.
Yesterday, the first witness of Liberty
Spoke to the committee. Hear him, here beside the Law.
Plant your hearts beside them, the Minutemen who died.
Each of you, citizens freed by some heroic
Soldier, has been paid for.
You, who were my first patriots, you
Bostonian, Virginian, Philadelphian, you
At Valley Forge, who frosted in winter, then
Marched on bloody feet, sustained me to the disappointment of
Socialist tyranny—desperate to enslave,
Starving for gold.
You, the Worker, the Soldier, the Statesman, the Poet...
You the Abolitionist, the Voter, the Parent, fought
Bold, unbroken, defying the tyrant
Defending your freedom.
Here, take your strength from me.
I am Liberty’s Tree watered by blood
Which will not be felled.
I Justice, I Freedom, I the Law
I am yours—but Vigilance must ever be paid.
Bring us justice, discipline this calumny
This night of sordid darkening morals.
Clinton, despite his filthy stain,
Cannot be erased, and if faced down
With courage, need not be suffered again.
Bring down these lies,
The nation is breaking in two.
Find worth again
In your freedom.
Women, children, men,
Cast this faker from the fruited lands.
Scold him for the rape of our most
Sacred creed. Inculpate him for
The damage of our most public trust.
Bring down his evil art,
Each new speech sells more mendacity
And new media spinning.
Do not be dissuaded ever
By polls, choked incessantly
By fecklessness.
The poison leaches inward,
Ordaining you by fate to face new depths of baseness.
Here, in this Republic’s foulest day
You must find the courage
To look to no easy out but me, the
Constitution, Justice, Rule of Law.
No less to citizens than the Executive.
No less to you now than the Founders then.
Here in the falsity of this modern day
You must have the guts to look down
And into this swindler’s eyes, into
His utter perfidy, his perjury
And say explicitly
Very explicitly
With reproach
Good riddance.
EXCELLENT! Very well done. Shelley would applaud the parody.
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Shelley is better material to work with than the alleged poet Angelou.
You flatter me, madam!
I’m sure I put more effort into painstakingly selecting the precise words to subtly tweak Angelou’s phrases and cadence than she did writing the original.
She probably dashed the original off while doing the laundry or something.
Actually, Claud, you made our day. I have always loved “Ozymandias.” And your version is most appropriate today.
Jesus is our only hope now. Obama has won again—Now I think a 3rd Term is possible—50 years of Progressive Rule that will turn us into a 3rd world state with a Liberal Nobility dedicated to Globalism and World citizenship.
those that provide the perspective of what happens when you want to hunker down and lick your wounds for a day? How about a Mary Poppins forum?
Obaliscious
Good one.
Love. it. very. much!
As I pour a pint of stout upon bent willie’s grave (a pint passed through my noble kidney’s, first), I shall read your grand parody to his filthy, degenerate ghost!
Thanks for that. While I never read much poetry, Ozymandias” was my favorite growing up.
Now we need a talented artist to draw that shattered visage of FUBO lying upon the barren ground.
Line 5: strike the initial "And", to bring the scansion into line (since "fly-ridden" has one more beat than "wrinkled").
Line 9: substitute "teleprompt" for "teleprompter", again for scansion's sake. Alternatively, "And on the teleprompter now these words appear:" which shifts the beat to the correct foot.
Line 13: substitute "Of vanished hope and change" (or "shattered", or some other two-syllable word with the accent on 1st syllable), again to shift the beat.
- I still give it an "A+" and recommendation for honors. :-D
It describes the Kenyan Pantload/Halfrican Queen to a T.
Just to round things out, here's the poem by Horace Smith:
"On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below"
IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder,and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
-- that sestet sort of gives one pause, doesn't it?
Emendations to lines 5 and 9 accepted. “Teleprompt” is a clever bit of verbal steampunk: I wish I’d thought of it!
For Line 13 “vanished” I don’t like because it conflicts with the image of decay. “Shattered” might do it.
Oh wait, nix shattered. It’s already used in a previous line.
How about "ruined"? "withered"? "ravaged"?
Btw, my husband who is not a fan of poetry generally re-read the original and then your offering, and loved it! (he said he had to memorize "Ozymandias" in the fourth grade, but had forgotten most of it.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.