Home » Poems » Best » Robert Whitford » Best Robert Whitford Poems

Best Poems Written by Robert Whitford

Below are the all-time best Robert Whitford poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Robert Whitford Poem

Grabberwocky-2

(November 2016)

Twas Hillig, but the Limey Gove
Did whine and witter in the Brext.
All Szyddly was the Orban cove
And Grabberwock out-Mexed.

“Beware the Grabberwock, my dear,
The salesman’s talk, the dubious thatch.
Beware his leakiwick, and fear
His groomious undersnatch.”

She took her righteous sword in hand.
Her people cried “Deplore, deplore!”
So rested she by the Dumdum tree—
And thought “deplore” some more.

And as in huffish thought she stood,
The Grabberwock, with hair aflame,
Came breitling through the barty wood,
And goebbelled as he came.

One, two! One, two! And through and through
His virtual blade went twitter-t***.
She got more voters, but he was POTUS
And he getrumphed like that:-

“See, I have slain the Hillinast!
I’ll build a wall, hire every mate!
I’ll bigly take America
And make it really grate.”

“I’ll put all Muslims in a book,
Intern them just like Nips,
And make sure Gooks use their own nukes
For the Trumpocalypse.”

“I’ll help the rich (more than that b****!).
I’ll make the bankers fat.
The blacks I’ll hump—and screw the Trump-
enproletariat.”

’Tis chillig. For the Sess-i-ones
Doth Bolt- and Bann-on on the right
All Vladdy are Assange’s tones
And prospects all outsh***.

Rob Whitford

Notes:
1. Needless to say, this is a parody of “Jabberwocky”, by Lewis Carroll
2. The first “Grabberwocky” was a much better poem—a “Jabberwocky” parody written in 1939 (http://www.waxdog.com/jabberwocky/nazi.html). Thanks to this for general inspiration, the title and the sadly still relevant verb “to goebbel”.
3. Re the slightly nerdy line 3, Beata Szydlo and Viktor Orban were the conservative nationalist Prime Ministers of Poland and Hungary, respectively, at the time.....
Copyright © Robert Whitford 2016

Details | Robert Whitford Poem

The Groom of the Stool

The Groom of the Stool

(Two meditations on an ancient post: see below)

I.
The Groom of the Stool needs some time
To commit his experience to rhyme.
This commodious peer
Detests diarrhoea
But thinks constipation sublime

II.
See where the philosophic King
Sits Rodinesque upon his “throne”.
The patient Groom stands wondering
And draws conclusions of his own.
As often at such times as these,
He thinks of Plato, Locke and Kant
And their epistemologies —
And of his own ingenious slant:
“His Majesty – though no-one’s fool,
A veritable Marc Aurel –
Rises still wiser from his stool.
From which it’s possible to tell
That wisdom comes not only a priori,
But also, sometimes, a posteriori.”


Note: These two tasteless pieces were prompted by a colleague’s discovery of the post of “Groom of the Stool”. 

This was a highly-placed courtier in 16th Century England, whose prestigious task it was – I regret to say, gentle reader – to wipe the Royal Bottom, at least according to some sources: 
* https://www.tudorsociety.com/groom-stool-sarah-bryson/;
* http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/king-toilet-attendant-england?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=atlas-page

We fell – as one would – to speculating about the philosophical and poetic potential of this post....

Details | Robert Whitford Poem

Grabberwocky-2a

Twas Hillig, but the Limey Gove
Did whine and witter in the Brext.
All Szyddly was the Orban cove
And Grabberwock out-Mexed.

“Beware the Grabberwock, my dear,
The salesman’s talk, the dubious thatch.
Beware his leakiwick, and fear
His groomious undersnatch.”

She took her righteous sword in hand.
Her people cried “Deplore, deplore!”
So rested she by the Dumdum tree—
And thought “deplore” some more.

And as in huffish thought she stood,
The Grabberwock, with hair aflame,
Came breitling through the barty wood,
And goebbelled as he came.

One, two! One, two! And through and through
His virtual blade went twitter-t***.
She got more voters, but he was POTUS,
And that, dear friends, was that.

“See, I have slain the Hillinast!
The presidency’s now my toy.
Oh Priebous day! Steve Bannon may
Hire Sessions, good ol’ boy.”

’Tis chillig, for the hydrogeoles
Now rattle loudly in the Jong.
All kneely are the sportiproles –
And Trump’s gone on too long.

Rob Whitford

Notes:
1. Needless to say, this is a parody of “Jabberwocky”, by Lewis Carroll
2. The first “Grabberwocky” was a much better poem—a “Jabberwocky” parody written in 1939 (http://www.waxdog.com/jabberwocky/nazi.html). Thanks to this for general inspiration, the title and the sadly still relevant verb “to goebbel”.
3. This is Grabberwocky-2a, because it is an amended and updated version of Grabberwocky-2, also on this site, which dates from late 2016. The amendments are in last couple of stanzas.
4. Regarding the slightly nerdy line 3, Beata Szydlo and Viktor Orban were the conservative nationalist Prime Ministers of Poland and Hungary, respectively at the time of the original draft. As of late 2020, Orban is still there.....

Details | Robert Whitford Poem

The Lay of Sir Donald

The Lay of Sir Donald

(Or: Le Chanson de Donald)

An orange man – of red and trailing tie,
Small hands, and copious twitter-feed – sing I!
Most staunch ’gainst Saracen and Mede is he,
Bare-armed and ruddy-necked his followers be.
Brightly he barteth, and knows how, full well,
In sev’n-score characters his truth to tell.
Courtly he is to nymphs – yea, most correct –
And any contradictions he’ll reject:
Talk of “ailuric rapture”, he maintains,
Was nothing more than banter between swains.
And though, by direst foe as “dotard” shamed –
By REGAL liege-man “moron”, too, proclaimed – 
He’s shunned by ANGELA, the Teuton queen
For policies much nearer black than green,
He’s loved by VIKTOR, chief of Magyar horde,
And (still?) VLADIMIR, Muscovy’s dark lord.
But all now tremble at his reckoning,
In Orient far, with JONG the Hermit King.
Tis hard to know whose head is the more beefy
Or whose hair more eccentric’ly coiffefe.
“Since in ballistics you indulge, and fission,”
Quoth he, “Let us contend in micturition.
My country’s armoury is locked and loaded
To make yours but a wilderness,” he goaded.
You doubt he sets his cap at Tyranny?
That risk of Bloody Warre augmented be?
As well to doubt the POPE’S denomination,
Or Silvan Sites of Ursine Defecation!

Details | Robert Whitford Poem

The New Colossus-2

Not like that loser green chick with the lamp,
Our New Colossus has his own gold door,
Behind it he tweets out his grand revamp:
Abjuring that which made it great before,
He seeks to make his country great again.
This brazen giant, air-bridged between the ears,
His beacon-hair glowing world-wide disdain,
Maskless, manipulates his base’s fears.
And with hogwash’d conspiracies defames.
Promising immigration a la carte
This….Mother, sullen-toddler eyed, proclaims:
“Send me Norwegians, cuz they are, like, smart.
Send me your Brits (no, hold on, better not!)
Send me some Russians—those are useful guys—
Totally Czechs and Slovenes, if they’re hot.
But do not send me those I do not prize.
We don’t do huddled masses any more.
Just keep them if they’re homeless, wretched, black—
The a**-hole refuse of your s***-hole shore.
Send those, I’ll send them, tempest-tost, right back.”

“And tweet me not of Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Emm Lazarus or Martin Luther King.
I’m the least racist guy you’ll ever know.
Those losers now don’t mean a goddam thing.
Abe Lincoln’s overrated, by the way,
The Gettysburg Address was way too long,
In seven-score characters I do OK--
OK? No, great! (So says my friend Kim Jong).
Abe was a loser. “Captain my Captain”? Please!
I prefer presidents who don’t get shot.
FDR, JFK and jerks like these,
The Rushmore crowd—I’m all that they are not.
“Government of, by, for...”! “What you can do..”!
“I cannot tell a lie, I chopped it down”!
“Nothing to fear but fear itself”! So who
Believes this crap? I’m not just any clown.
By fair means or by foul I’ll win the race.
My bigliness by fate has been decreed.
Don’t wave the Constitution in my face:
Amendment No.2 is all I need.”

For the inspiration--the Emma Lazarus poem on the pedestal of New York's Statue of Liberty--see https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus