“It’s not even O.K. to go golfing with the president, saying
that it’s about showing respect for the office, not the man.
Sorry, but when the office is held by someone trying to
undermine the Constitution, doing anything that normalizes
him and lends him respectability is a political act.”
Paul Krugman
1
If McIlroy golfing with Trump was not
an endorsement, then it was a cheap shot
by two con artists, Donald and Rory,
using the media to sell their story
by executing a clever chip shot.
A chip shot approaches the verdant scene—
meaning both the money and the green—
by lofting the ball, in a kind of soft sell,
Trump as Peter Pan, Rory as Tinker Bell,
cashing in like an ATM machine.
Trump’s a scurvy real estate brigand,
born and raised in Queens, on Long Island,
profiting from a life-long real estate scam,
making promises not worth a tinker’s damn,
smiling all the time while orange tanned.
With his torso twisting and his chin jutting,
Rory made his millions driving and putting,
a Catholic from Northern Ireland,
the United Kingdom’s no-man’s land,
where papists find it hard to find their footing.
His devoted dad worked hundred-hour weeks
cleaning toilets and fixing bathtub leaks
to finance the little shaver’s golf career,
while his mother delighted the little dear
by buying Scottie Tam o’ Shanter batiks.
Donald and Rory make gifts to charity
to maintain the illusion of parity
between the strongman and the wuss,
between the rich and the rest of us
who don’t profit from their prosperity.
Trump and McIlroy, the odd couple—
Presbyterian teachers, papist pupils,
sleights of hands in golf gloves
in a field of financial foxgloves
where their money quadruples.
2
In golf Trump’s such an inveterate cheater
that if he played his own mother he’d cheat her.
Even shanking, he ends up with the best lie,
and when challenged blusters like Captain Bligh,
not face to face but as a tweeter.
It’s really hard to know what he thinks
when he’s golfing on his many links.
Since he’s unable to conceptualize,
he obsessives over the small size
of his fingers playing tiddledywinks.
Because he’s not particularly well hung,
Trump’s like a brass bell that’s never rung,
like a flagpole on which no flag flies,
like a gossip columnist who never pries,
or like a stirring hymn that’s never sung.
Speaking of size, I perhaps should relate
that on his Florida Mar-A-Lago estate
Trump erected an eighty-foot-tall flagpole
in the proximity of the eighteenth hole.
Fit-to-be-tied, county officials were irate.
Trump’s notorious for innumerable torts
and the eighty-foot pole ended up in the courts
where, snatching compromise from the jaws of defeat,
his lawyers negotiated “a pole of ten less feet,”
which sounds like a puzzle by Will Shortz.
3
Trump’s a pusillanimous, backstabbing
draft dodger who’s perpetually blabbing,
who’s continually trying to save face,
a potbellied non-entity, a bonafide nutcase
who, when he’s not gabbing, is pussy grabbing.
If he would release his tax returns
we could learn how much he really earns,
but he adamantly absolutely refuses to
release that information to public view,
saying it’s none of their concerns.
If he wasn’t among the very prominent,
and especially if wasn’t president—
the quizzical equivalent of the Grand Teton—
there’d be those who’d say he was only a pee-on
in a Golden Shower that glows like neon.
When president Trump owns the venue,
it seems terrible but unfortunately true,
not only that he’s his daughter’s sugar daddy,
but also that the devil’s his caddy
and the Gold Surfboard his favorite hairdo.
And who created that hairdo, Max Factor?
Max wasn’t a producer, not even an actor.
His real name was Maksymilian Faktorowicz.
Was it he who covered up Trump’s MPHL glitch?
Only his hairdresser knows for sure.
When President Trump owns the venue
there’s nothing much you can do
about his excesses, such as his gold tresses
and mad, impromptu state of the world addresses
because he’s allegedly a “billionaire,” not you.
4
And speaking of having little time,
Trump complained it was a crime
how much of it Barack spent on the greens.
When he was president he was Mr. Greenjeans
whose on-link lolling was pure downtime.
But now that Trump’s the president
the unprecedented time not spent
in the Oval Office is allegedly as negligible
as the time he was putatively eligible
for the draft, which was nonexistent.
If Trump owned only a single course,
we would still live under his curse.
Even if he didn’t own a single link,
even if he had the ability to think,
he’d still be going nowhere in reverse.
Some golfers lead normal lives,
have cars, kids, and love their wives,
but, unlike our non-majoritarian president,
they don’t believe they’re heaven-sent,
and don’t expect ballyhoo and high fives.
When the president owns the venue,
he doesn’t need to apologize to you.
Possession is nine-tenths of the law,
and it’s his balls sticking in your craw
and his clubs producing the revenue.
That after all is the bottom line:
whose money it is, whose gold mine.
Whether you’re a peasant or a czar,
a round of golf usually averages par,
whether it’s eighteen holes or nine.
5
But with Trump life’s Russian roulette;
he takes his chances and gets what he can get.
He’s a greedy, pathological narcissist
whom his brainless followers can’t resist,
but everyone else would love to forget.
They’re not amused by all his guff,
his holes-in-one and escapes-from-the-rough,
by eighty-foot flagpoles reduced to seventy,
and other trumped up stuff aplenty.
With Trump enough’s never enough.
Because what’s at stake is civilization
versus nothing less than nuclear annihilation.
Think of the things that we take for granted
that may with his presidency be supplanted,
such as thousands of years of evolution—
from apes to erect Homo sapiens,
to Captain Kirk from unfriendly aliens,
to liberal Republicans from Dixiecrats,
from beds of nails to ergonomic yoga mats,
from dreadful addictions to harmless yens.
6
The age of Trump is hard to believe,
and, like a virgin birth, hard to conceive.
Is it by chance repressed anality?
Isn’t that, at least a possibility,
that it's a case of Adam and Steve?
The small stubby fingers, the very tight grip,
the deep, sinking feeling, the very tight ship,
the paunch, the jowls, the disappearing chin?
Now look at the trouble we’re in:
he’s about to hand each of us a pink slip.
Are we failures on The Apprentice,
handicapped, without a prosthesis?
Are holes-in-one our secular religion
and is our Oxford not Harvard but Wharton
where the Golf Club forges links of avarice?
When you own the links you play on,
you can be as brainless as Ronald Reagan.
Who’s going to complain? Only news freaks
believe in those Golden Shower leaks
in which Trump plays a lowly pee-on.
Like a golf course without greens or holes,
or a materialistic monastery without souls,
are we the victims of a merciless heel
programmed to cheat, lie, and steal,
by one of the world’s great assholes.
Robert Forrey
