TRUMPeting Haiku by Bob Barancik

Read by Mimi Rice, veteran Tampa Bay actress and radio theater producer.
Listen to an interview with Mimi

I talk very loud
because I know so little—
booming words impress.
My big ideas balloon 
and inflate and inflate…
pop!

Trump encroaches on
my mind like a cockroach’s
mad dash toward garbage.

24/7
news cycle keeps spewing crap—
will sleep ever come?

They know the answers
and can tell you the questions—
Fox News always right.

I ask not out of
curiosity but fear—
I simply must know.
Why do they hate Jews and Blacks
and Brown skins but not themselves?

To make sure my words
go unread and unspoken
I just write haiku.
The world runs on statistics
not the scribbling of mystics.

Atlas bore the weight
of the world on his shoulders
but did not collapse.
Trump does not feel weight of world
but clubs it like a golf ball.

I try to write a 
haiku about Charlottesville—
the sound of jack boots.

We are lost at sea
and the lifeboat is sinking—
but we all sit tight.
The waves wave goodbye to us
while the ship of state goes down.


Interview with Mimi Rice