Trump – Robert Garnham

Where’s my FIFA Peace Prize?

I also deserve a Fifa Peace Prize, and I’ll thump anyone who says I don’t.

All of my friends want a Fifa Peace Prize, too. We were in the pub the other night. We sat around talking about the Fifa Peace Prize and Doug said that he was the most deserving because it’s been three years since he’d last hit someone over the head with a coffee table. I told him that such an aversion to violence was commendable. But I deserved it more because, for me, it was five years since I had last coffee tabled someone.

That’s how it is with friends, you can be open about such matters. It really does pay to talk. Mumbling John said that he had given all of his relatives Fifa Peace Prizes. Apparently, they made pretty good door stops. You can wedge a fire exit open with a Fifa Peace Prize, he opined, especially those with a spring-loaded hinge mechanism. Doug then told him that there were probably knock-off Fifa Peace Prizes out there, made of cheap metals and available widely on the counterfeit goods market. And they almost came to blows, the two of them.

‘Stop it, lads’, I said, ‘there’s no reason to fight’.

They then accused me of saying this just so that I could be in contention for a Fifa Peace Prize.

Mumbling John then pointed out that his sister Vocal Sue sold items online and made a living from it, that her garden shed was stocked full of the latest fads, trends and crazes. The deeper she goes into her shed, the different layers of such trends she comes across. The most recent layer is Labubus. If she goes further back, then it’s Tickle Me Elmos. Right at the back of her shed is where you find her tamagotchis. Soon, she reckons, another layer will be added of Fifa Peace Prizes. She calls herself an archeologist of the present moment, which is quite literary for someone who once said, ‘I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous’.

I then suddenly remembered that I hadn’t checked in on my tamagotchi for about fifteen years, which made me feel both guilty and undeserving of a Fifa Peace Prize.

We started talking about what we wanted for our next birthday presents. We always buy each other gifts. Mumbling John said that he would be okay with socks, or some cheap after shave, or a Fifa Peace Prize. Doug said that he didn’t want anything too special, perhaps just an Amazon voucher, or a Labubu, or a Fifa Peace Prize. But before they could ask me what I wanted for my next birthday, Doug suddenly felt it necessary to yell at the man at the next table, ‘What the bloody hell are you staring at, mate?’, which was his traditional precursor to a punch-up.

‘Come on, lads’, I said, ‘no need to fight’.

‘You’re only saying that to get a Fifa Peace Prize’, Doug replied.

‘No I’m not’.

‘You bloody are!’

‘Want to fight about it?’

‘That’s more like it’.

The old reverse psychology. Tensions lifted. We’d half-raised ourselves out of our seats, but then sat back down again. Neither of us could be arsed. Which got me wondering if the ultimate deterrent for world conflict is genuine and widespread apathy.

And this might well have been the case on this occasion, were it not for the fact that I felt obliged, at that moment, to flick the end of his nose.

The man on the next table threw back his head in laughter. So at least I was bringing joy to the world.

It was Mumbling John who calmed us down. ‘Hey lads’, he said. ‘Watch this’.

He picked up a plastic straw and placed it in a glass of lemonade. An optical illusion made it appear as if the end of the straw was disjointed.

‘See that?’, he said. ‘That’s a demonstration of light refraction.’

‘Fascinating’, Doug said.

‘Remarkable’, I replied.

We both looked at the straw in the glass of lemonade and neither of us felt like escalating our violence. Even the man on the next table was interested.

At that moment, the door opened and some representatives of Fifa entered the pub. They approached our table, and Mumbling John’s face lit up.

Could it be? Were they about to . . .

A fanfare sounded and a silence fell across the boozer. Every head swivelled in our direction. The horse brasses hanging from the old oak beams glistened in the glare of the mobile phones recording the impromptu ceremony.

‘Congratulations’, one of the officials said, lifting up a huge trophy and placing it on the table in front of Mumbling John.

‘What is it?’

‘The Fifa Physics Prize’.

He looked at it, a little sadly.

‘Thanks’, he said.

Ode to You Know Who

Oh my goodness you really are a repulsive little man.
If we should ever pass in the street I certainly
Wouldn’t doff my cap.
It makes my stomach churn even to think we are
The same species.
Your utterances are toxic and deliberately 
Pugnacious and delivered with all of the wit and grace
Of a turd.
I don’t like you very much.

Oh, you saggy-bottomed baggy-jowelled loud-mouthed
Orange-faced dolt
With an expression like a spinster aunt
Straining out a poo in a station toilet
Three minutes before her train is due.
You weak-willed flabby-cheeked oddly-coiffured 
Stumpy-legged dunderhead
With a mouth like a cat’s arse,
I bet you’ve got a really small knob.
You red-capped Diet Cola-quaffing potty-mouthed
Egotistical scare-mongering morally-bankrupt pile of
Upchuck.
I don’t like you very much.

You no longer need compassion to be President, apparently.
Nor any sort of wisdom nor decorum,
Just a feel for the simple prejudices that sound good
In their repeating
And an inherent inferiority complex which migh stem
From your minuscule Willy
And a hint of righteous indignation,
The last simpering gasp of mature debate
In which the ultimate insult is to accuse your enemies
Of kindness 
And list among their number
Those less fortunate, less privileged, less straight,
More trans and definitely less white than yourself,
What kind of thinking does this legitimise?
What message does this send out to women
Who have been the victims of sex predators,
Or men who think it’s fine to act on such urges,
What message does this send out to the casual racist
You cry baby
You big cry baby
You white supremacist cry baby.
I don’t like you very much.

You name is an old English word for fart, how apt,
For thou art
A rancid wind passed on to the pages of history,
A stench, a gaseous build up let rip
Leaving in its wake an odour of smug pomposity

Oh, you snivelling snot bag,
You drivel-emitting weasel-brained rapscallion,
You bulbous-cheeked odious
Clay-brained tit, you crusty scab
On the face of common decency,
You pungent base fascism-obsessed unnecessary
Foul-brained ass of a man.
How I long for you to be photographed
Making love to an life sized cardboard cut out version
Of yourself while
Elon Musk wanks in the corner 
How I long for that
How I long for that day.

You were on TV the other nigh
Speaking your usual complete and utter bollocks
And I had a sudden urge to lick
Oh please let me lick
Let me lick the side of your
Craggy orange face.

The rise of wilful buffoonery and the allure of people like that Trump bloke.

I don’t usually do politics. The kind of spoken word that I do is an escape from the real world, though I do poetry about themes and society, such as LGBT issues, representation and inequality. I don’t usually do pieces about real people either, unless you count Jeremy Clarkson and Katie Hopkins, both of whom I’ve performed humorous poems about. I always see such poems as having a relatively short shelf life. I haven’t performed the Clarkson poem much since the muppet was fired from Top Gear. It was a sad day.
However this year has truly been a bummer, politically speaking, not only with that whole Brexit thing, (what the hell was all that shout?), and the populism of that Farage bloke, the rise of the rather spooky Teresa May, (again obliterating one of my poems, in which I mention ‘Home Secretary Teresa May. Short shelf life, you see), but rather more scarily, the ominous buffoonery of Donald Trump.
I’ve tried to make sense of all this as the ultimate expression of celebrity culture, the rise of anti-intellectualism, image over content, bluster as a signifier of the supposedly downtrodden. The result of the Europe referendum demonstrated, to my way of thinking, the wilful protest of the supposedly under-represented. Both Farage and Trump have grasped the idea that it doesn’t matter what lies you tell, as long as you sound angry. They have created situations in which there is a supposed opposition to everything which their supporters only just now realise that they cherish. Abstract concepts such as freedom, identity of the dominant culture, fear of change, the foreign Other. The more they shout and lie, the more popular they get, because the lies are so obvious that they’ve become conceptual anti-political protests.
I’d like to write poetry about this. But none of it is very poetic. The best way to fight bluster and bullying is often with humour, and that’s happening a lot in the US but not so much over here. I can’t remember who said that you can’t win an argument against stupidity. But when the stupidity is a purposeful tactic to win arguments, that’s when we should be worried.
The Pet Shop Boys did a song called I’m With Stupid, which had the line, ‘Is stupid really stupid, or a different kind of smart?’
Will all of this blow over? Probably not. Mr Trump hopefully won’t win the election, but you can never be too sure. People are being put off politics, including the politicians, and this will lead to a whole generation of media-managed calculated blundering, office as character, celebrity warmongering.