Best Sycophants Poems
When Poetry Soup becomes infested with partisan rubbish,
It will be difficult for liberal, creative poets, like me to flourish
Who seek a safe place away from the maddening ignorance
Of those people who continually despise political difference
For those who are angry and want to say the nastiest things
Do you have any idea what hurt your insatiable blather brings?
For some who don’t consider me a red-blooded American patriot,
I fought for the U.S. of A. in uniform when you were still just a tot!
I would rather die on the altar of honor than continually be castigated
By followers of a “wannabe” dictator who every day prevaricated
And sought to drag our country down into the muck and mire
Continues, to this day, stoking his sycophants’ hatred with fire.
Selecting a political putdown of President Joseph Biden for Poem of the Day
Was surely inappropriate if Poetry Soup administrators wish to say
The site maintains neutrality when it comes to political discourse
It encouraged poets, in their remarks, to choose up sides, of course
Anger and vitriol hurled toward us who are of more left-leaning mind
Will likely now become commonplace for those who are not so inclined.
Frankly, I despise clicking on a poem I think will be worth reading
Only to find, instead, an anti-American tirade of invective leading
To put-downs against our president, the vice-president, and first lady
Half-truths and conspiracy theories that, for the most part, are shady
If you are unhappy with the free and fair election that turned out your man
Then, every chance you get, go vote and change the system, if you can!
Our country is not, I think we’d all agree, a perfect democracy
We have lots of problems and crises – that's plain to see, but,
We now have a leader who cares about doing what is right
A man, who in short-order, is ready, committed, and willing to fight.
I have travelled the world over, north and south, east and west
Freedom to flourish in America is head and shoulders above the rest!
Written: April 4, 2021 (edited)
Awarded Poem of the Day on Poetry Soup
April 5, 2021
#38 on Best New Poems on Poetry Soup
April 6, 2021
Inside a boisterous tavern,
a-light with drunken gaiety
of spilled ribald laughter,
he quietly sits alone ...
gently cradling his mead darkly
Brooding thoughts of past paid coverings
buzzes inside his head
Talking flies having the faces of the dead
“Have mercy, please”
This haunting cry, they all pled ...
except the halo head ones
“I forgive you”
This they all compassionately say
in time dispersed unison
The self-muted giant rubs his eyes,
still in somber inner disquietude,
at this troubling sight he has seen several times
Witnessing a bright, shining glow,
which radiates all around the tops of those
who call themselves Christian disciples —
before descends the sharp, quieting blow
It is by his liege, Caesar’s command,
to eradicate the scattering vermin radicals,
that he daily swings the severing blade
The duty-bound Herodian executioner
must always stay masked
when the murdering performance ensues
This is by privileged decree:
the entertainment requirement rules
A black cloth covering,
sprinkled with scarlet droplets,
is the terror mask his masters has him use
Rabid crown sycophants love their crucifixions,
the Roman preferred method of capital punishment
But, his under-lord, Herod, still adheres
to the ancient Molech ways —
Death by the beheading blade
Sighing, the brooding giant gazes about the riotous inn
with roaring, unspoken disdain
Even without the ritual Deimos mask on,
all within the tavern knows his occupation,
evidenced by his massive frame
They yield a fearful wide berth to him,
no one sits in the seats around his hulking presence
Looking down at his Pilate-cursed hands,
he sees the blood of the guilty and the innocent
Bloody hands that can’t be washed clean ... never
As long as he raises his arms,
and lets the body-separating blade swing
Soft as quicksand is the ground beneath the feet
of those whose words attempt to rile and defeat
Thrown stones cause few ripples before they sink
Crass sycophants fill their pens with delible ink
Barbed sticks tossed never hurt their quarry
Never scratch the skin or give cause for worry
No bones do they break with sly baited remarks
A witless dog tries to bite with nippings and barks
Their rattling and prattling bounce like empty echoes
given off by insectivorous terrestrial lizards - geckos
On Christmas Eve an Angel
felt the sorrow of the Lord.
Who wept for the many Children
sentenced to perish by the sword.
What alarm and consternation
could sweep their lives away?
By those who think a Child's extirpation
would not lead their souls astray.
As Doctors and their sycophants
ply their trade with minatory skill.
Know there are a thousand causes
for which to die but none for which to kill.
What sweet music would not be written
and what songs would not be sung?
What picture worth a thousand words
would never unite the world as one?
So 'Peace on Earth' to those who care
but take from this to hear my plea.
For every precious Child not born of Earth
is a lost building block we need.
And to those who cower in the dead of night
afraid to speak for fear of enmity and strife.
Please look deep within and feed your spirit...
you may just save a Child's life.
What disease would not be beaten
and what further pain will be our curse?
What person plagued by an unknown affliction
would want to make things any worse?
The Angel thought about such irony
of a Child ripped tragically from its womb.
Knowing such a Child may have held the key
to a society's heightened gloom.
So the Angel gathers up the Children
who would not see the light of Christmas day.
And takes them to the gates of Heaven
to revel in the laughter they all displayed.
But back on Earth... more decisions made
to add another name to Heaven's scroll.
But the Infant's death will not save our place
as we abide another heinous stain upon our soul.
So 'Peace on Earth' to those who care
but take from this to hear my plea.
For every precious child not born of Earth
is a lost building block we need.
And to those who cower in the dead of night
afraid to speak for fear of enmity and strife.
Please find your courage this Christmas Eve...
and save a Child's life.
The End
*For The Darker Side of Christmas Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Richard Lamoureux
Date: December 15/2019
Deceit and duplicity, vengeance and vanity
Exploit our weaknesses and dissipate our souls’ strength
As arrogance cockroaches multiply their insanity
We diminish the strength of our faith
The more we immerse ourselves in new technologies
Stung by advances in artificial intelligence
Deluding our ignorance and bestowing empty eulogies
On partners we loathe despite pangs of conscience
That work harder to retain a semblance of humanity
In souls gone dead and mad with material wealth
Accumulated and concealed from established authority
In the mistaken belief that the theft we perpetuate in our stealth
Shan’t leave a trail auditors will pursue
In our bid to aggrandize an increasingly hollow ego
Gone insensitive and unreceptive to the moral malaise and torture that ensue
As the moral compass hitherto central to our lives we forgo
In preference for catalyzing the rat race that the vulnerable
Crush underfoot
To splurge with disgust as the horrible and the irascible
Thrive in the sight of the sycophants we recruit
As cheerleaders
With unabashed shame
In the midst of death traders and peddlers
On whom we’re not able to pin blame
Cos together we rot
In body and mind
Our consciences bought and caught
Up in webs of ego-tripping that render us morally blind and unkind.
she reaches behind the smokescreen
of her sunken eyed curtain veils
films of tears void of translucence
stoke reminiscent ashes that trace
another blinding thick-skinned defeat
hidden by camouflage and smears
touched up campaigns of bravery
her retinas a web of hallucinations
illusion delusion cataracts and dreams
stirred but not entirely shaken as
she reaches for another glass to empty
while numbness mixes with mirages
of victory over hits and misses
on battle lines of reconstruction
a palisade and shield from truth
her sentience slips into severance
from memories epiphanies and falls
from grace as she applauds the circus clown
and crazy court jester she became to be
in sadness badness insanity while
holding on to fragmented shards
screeching on the palette of many
a brush with fate curses and agony
she is a survivor of abuse and violence
exploitation and deliberate transgressions
and reaches deeply into her resolve
to allocate anger to where it belongs
instead of blaming her own kindness
she lifts the olive branch closer
to her tumbler spits out the hemlock
and trusts that tears will dry
once excoriations have dried up
until then she is not the drunkard
she is made out to be by sycophants
and hypocrites who spiked her
drink of life but merely coping
for the moment and longing for solutions
29th July 2021
Each of them had one
A golden shovel
To sweep away the detritus
Of life’s lingering keepsakes
Scratching the gold-plated spears
Dodging deaths deadline
Struggling to be remembered
Ecologically egotistical entrepreneurs
Pictures, suitable for framing
Polished, souvenir hard hats
Sign waving sycophants
Applauding the arrogance
Of progressive platitudes.
An old woman weeps
The shadow of her home gone
The echoes of her life fading
A Teddy bear lays crushed
Beneath an unseen future.
Livelihood is in clothing but deprived of its sleeves
sustenance never recognizing a path
to stability and regularity
basic needs tripling into an extended family.
Yet I survived.
Some long time ago, just any cover
above the head was enough and satisfactory.
Hustling creates a rare climbing route
while givers of admiration aren’t ready to loan it.
Yet I pressed on.
Great substance has now magnified such identity
popularity then serves a mind so ‘hand-some’
red carpets, shots and flashes, escort volunteers
sycophants in suits, money-made friends and currency mongers.
The lard labour prior to this victory, no one remembers.
Life is one, but a meaningful one is immortal
any mark can be erased but a stamp stays permanent
in a heterogeneous world both graceful and diabolic
wealth just adds a number to a ringing name
but a hand of great influence
attracts the worship of future generations.
While midnight bats are gnawing gnats and feasting free unseen,
a toddler’s fed from garbage sheds an elegant cuisine.
Along the trails in distant dales a lonesome wolverine
feigns appetite on fogy nights and days of crystalline.
The circus gongs excite the throngs in nighttime Never Land –
they swarm to see the destiny of Freaks at their command,
while Acrobats step pitapat across the shifting sands
and Lady Fat adores her cat and oozes charm unplanned.
The Dwarfs in suits, so small and cute when marching with the band,
ask crimson Clowns with painted frowns, to lend a mutant hand,
while Tamers’ whips with withered tips, throughout the winter land,
lure minds entranced through hoops enhanced with flames of fires fanned.
White Elephants in big-top tents sell black tusk contraband
to Sycophants in regiments who overflow the stands,
but No One sees anomalies, and No One understands.
At night’s demise, the dither dies, the lonely Crowd disbands,
down dead-end streets the Horde retreats, their threadbare rags in strands,
and Janes and Joes reweave their woes, for thoughts of change are banned.
Continued
Life is a combination of different strata and classes
with the upper classes feeding on the states of the lower
which is the usual, displayed in most societies and cultures
and such a web between nations even more complex and sticky.
The developed massively profits on the developing
sustaining such a system for the affluent to stay powerful.
Pressing situations persist within their borders
but that of other nations becomes a meat and potatoe issue
while their greed stays a correspondent
to growing territories without a good sight.
They are obese hypocrites seeking for malnourished sycophants
promoting democracy but stabbing its legs in struggling communities
if propagation of governance isn’t favourable to their selfishness.
Merchandise and production from below becomes contraband
to tense such economies and make them perspire
even if a little consideration is reluctantly offered,
the controlled global markets will still sustain the toppers
feeding the climbers with crumbs to soften their bones.
Heavy makeup is the painting on their wealthy faces
to attract the scanty seedlings of the insufficient future cultivation of others
putting growth under a miasma of depression
to militate against economic and political independence.
Nevertheless, a stranger can only manipulate a home
if foolishly allowed to exhibit some level of command.
A major fertilizer to this trending cause
is laxity and mediocrity on the part of the sufferer
which has got so matronly to need meals on wheels
We Are One (Nigeria Remix)
Ever seen an eagle feeding like a vulture?
Dignity trampled on, where corruption is a culture?
Darkness threatens her future, cause of her shapeless structure
it’s saddening 'cause she’s been richly blessed by Mother Nature
Disunity like a knife tryna cut her apart
Of the National cake the lower class don’t get a part
There’s a saying you will reap whatever that you plant
There’s fruit of hatred ripening deep in our hearts
Blame it on the Government and the sycophants right
Most citizens do not get a fair role of the dice
Economic recessions led to skyrocketing price
Job rate inverse proportional to the rate of crime
What’s the way forward for a nation without steady lights
Mourning like every night
Late fluorescents with candle lights
Our eagles been flying lowly, yet it’s a scary flight
A thousand tonnes of honor and glory, heavy right
But you'll see everyday
That we'll never turn away
When it seems all your dreams come undone
We will stand by your side
Filled with hope and filled with pride
We are more than we are
We are one
Though different color or eyes skin hair and different faces
Different cultures, tribes, religions and languages
Different dreams and believes
Different gifts we received
From the creator, our souls embedded into nature
We are one
Flesh and blood, living under the sun
A species divinely created in the likeness of God (we are)
Precious like diamonds and pearls (we)
Put in charge of the universe
In freedom, peace and unity and the winds of love
We are bound
Though divided by rivers, streams and boarders lines carved in time,
by civilization and secession into nations we may divide
but only one God watches over us like the sun in the sky
If chords unite our land, lets create a unity band
No such thing as a perfect world, but we could make it better
The grass been turning brown, you and I and can make it greener
God disguised as fate, made us Nigerians for a plan
Our nation will be great, if we unite we will stand
...everyday
That we'll never turn away
When it seems all your dreams come undone
We will stand by your side
Filled with hope and filled with pride
We are more than we are
We are one
He was growing old and senile and his hair began to fall,
And he perched on a stool to tell accounts of the past,
Of how he’d fought for his country and of his manifold valiant deeds,
Speaking of patriotic comrades who’d long returned to dust.
His neighbors sometimes thought that his stories were a joke
But elders who had understanding of the past
Knew his honesty and the truthfulness with which he spoke;
But we don’t hear his tales today for the old Musyoka passed way.
Not many mourned him, perhaps only his children and wife,
For he led an ordinary uneventful lifestyle;
He had a part-time job and a family, calmly heading his way;
The world did not know when death took his nationalistic smile.
When thievish politicians die of eating too much
Their sinful corpses honorably lie in state
While spoon-fed sycophants give crammed eulogies,
But a freedom soldier quietly succumbs to his unfortunate fate.
It seems the greatest contribution to the wellbeing of our republic
Is to lie to the people and severally break your unfeasible promises,
But the patriotic soldier who lays down his life for the country,
Goes unnoticed to his grave without the minutest of praises.
The earnings of a politician are more than their service,
But a patriotic soldier gives up his life to protect his countrymen,
Yet his pension is small and old age and disease the only rewards,
And an ordinary death awaits him at three score and ten.
It is easy to forget old Musyokas for they live no more,
Even disregard that such heroes ever went to the battlefield,
But I hear heart-rending cries from forgotten graves yonder,
Where old Musyokas and their devoted mates restlessly lie.
They cry, “sons and daughters, we died like common folks,
Yet we are the reason why you enjoy the peace you have,
We lost our arms and legs and most of us died cheap as a fox;
Will you deny us a simple and costless thing such as honor?”
I loathe hearing the fallen old Musyoka and mates haunt me so
But I’m not the commander-in-chief of the land,
Nor am I some legislator in the August House,
I can’t honor a fly, but old Musyoka won’t understand.
How could a man be so cruel, i was thinking at deep
How could one make her weep , i was thinking at deep
she was a spinster,,and it was all she made for her
The abiogenesis of emotions never grew as she met a sycophant
It was all abnegated as she was a shrew,
While he was a taciture with a misogynistic heart
She was all fastidious but he always had a belief
Nothing is much balefulI unless we are not eccentric
Unless we are ascetic holding the parasol
It is only then all sycophants would die
It is only then when spinsters would have their men
When there is no intestatement of a soul
THE FALL OF THE WHITE ELEPHANT’S CAN’T FAIL IDEA
No self-respecting politician wanted to drink from that well
the self-inflicted delusion persisted for the faithful
they were shocked but not surprise when they learned
the head elephant had walked away with much cash
But his larcenous ways landed him in prison
Money, something very dear to his black heart,
or where his heart should have been,
felt good; he didn’t need the cash, he had said
he was wealthy and his multitudes believed his every lie
On and on he talked, the media checked his words
but to no avail nobody believed the lies the media reported
since they trusted their leader, no one questioned him,
lying became a part of his steady rhetoric and he escalated it
Until the day his forty thousand obvious lies were too much
and he lost the election by ten million votes
and true to his character he did not leave with dignity
he left violently
Not a word was heard throughout the broken party called the GOP
even they forgave him for absconding with much money
but the opposition had done its job of throwing the corrupt out
he and he was gone back to con-scam land where he had come from
But the gullible sycophants naively incapable of learning history's lessons
without critical analysis of what had brought down their party
immediately began searching for the one who could finesse the lies
their motto became "Stay True to the Big Lie" or "Ignorance is good"
The blind faithful obeyed his misguided verbal bellows
to vilify, discredit, attack and continue his false self-righteous ways
to obstruct the law that was in hot pursuit
the news that he was to be punished comforted the American citizen
But on and on they go lying and denying to this day
what the rest of the world knows to be true
but the demolished idea of establishing the next Fourth Reich
died when the cell door slammed shut
This land that's always searching for ways to perfect the imperfect law,
assist our sacred Constitution to forge forward
always seeking to instruct on freedom, liberty, justice
and improving those citizens' minds imbued with incalculable stupidity.
Lighter is its economy, floats slower than a feather,
wasting resources, capable of becoming marketable leather,
pollutes the air for citizens to suffer bad weather,
expecting Yams from planting the seedlings of Onions,
results to failure regardless of any opinion.
A marriage, dangerous to the spouses’ sexualities
and then the tussle for who’s the next principality
without any regard to God and to humanity
only sustains the fire of a bitter union,
a truth accepted by, not just my opinion.
The masses pay with all they’ve got in one offering,
yet are used as unnecessary sacrifices to continue suffering
but the best they can do is just to keep baffling
on whose tribe or religion should take dominion,
smiling in affliction is foolishness, in my opinion.
Reduced to nothing for poverty to place its stickers
Sycophants emerging from most of all its thinkers
a once courageous Cat, now has lost its whiskers
becoming a laughing stock in its international communion
oh, this is a bitter fact and not just an opinion.
A country on barefoot, not even on slippers
encouraging ethnic robbers to be its Gate Keepers,
rights deprived of its meals, even mere supper,
mercenaries romanced as government companions.
Nigeria is already doomed, that’s my strong opinion.
Published: 6/24/2020
For the Opinion Poetry Contest
sponsored by Kai Michael Neumann
Position: 5th place [6/29/2020]