Room 56 • Poetry Hotel
Five Installments / Donnie Goes
1. DONNIE GOES
He is given a hero’s welcome. All the dead people he’s praised are there and administer
high fives. Were he subject to any self-doubts, he would feel vindicated. But all leading
indicators call bullshit on even trace elements of self-doubt. If you’ll allow an analogy:
Prince goes to his doctor and tells him he only eats purple food. The doctor tries to keep
a game face while ever so gingerly chiding Prince that he is endangering his health, and
that a balanced diet . . .blah blah blah. (Wah wah wah’s from a muted trombone: the
teacher’s voice in Charlie Brown cartoons.) The Purple One is looking around the office,
and at the sad, stupid clothes on the doctor’s back—those shoes! really?—and thinking
why should I listen to you. If I do, I might end up dressing like you.
Catch my drift.
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2. DONNIE GOES
Still there: inside the Pearly Gates. Going big. Bigly, that’s yesterday’s news.
Here and now, it’s cheeseburgers all around. Supersized. He hopes the wage-slave
suckers who voted for him and the main chance plutocrats and hydrocarbon
oligarchs who jumped on the bandwagon and the pig-trough politicians who
thought he was the useful idiot aren’t there too, and he’s relieved. They are not.
The Christian Nationalists and Evangelicals are also absent. I could modify absent
with glaringly, expect it’s not a surprise, to Donnie or you or me or anyone else.
The Christian Nationalists and Evangelicals themselves pretty much knew it all along.
You thought you knew where this was going. But how could you, when me,
myself, and I didn’t know. Him either. He never knows what’s going to come out
of his mouth. Or his ass. He’s getting up there. Sometimes he can’t remember the
difference.
What next. Nothing much. Just him and the Principalities, Archangels, and
Angels, the Dominions, Virtues, and Powers, the Seraphim, Cherubim, and
Thrones, an upside down Bible or two. None of his kids. None of his wives. Talk
about dodging a hail of bullets.
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3. DONNIE GOES
Love is in the Air! And in the Fireball. The Water. The Earth. It takes root in his mondo
loins. Shaped like a mushroom. As if. There were. Any relation. To the size. Of his hands.
Another shibboleth debunked.
He’s feeling like Spring in November. Who needs a bib. Froggy never went a’ courtin’
like this. Miss Mouse has multiplied, into a veritable harem. Bend over, Little Marco.
Pucker up, AG designate Gaetz. Make that Blondi. (A show of hands in support of
Deborah Harry for the job.) Hi Di Ho & Away You Go, Pistol Pete Hegseth and Ham.
Show some elan, Elon. The Future is Now, after all. Soon enough you’ll be carrying
DJT’s Love Child. Belly bump up to the bar, Missus Musk-Trump.
Look and see. How gracious Our Incoming can be! The Compleat Condescending
Conqueror. Practically metrosexual. Pinkie extended whilst he guzzles Mountain Dew
then executes a textbook Danny Thomas mouth-spit in JD’s face. It’s your own fault,
Veep-Veep (Roadkill Runner), you shoulden tell such funny jokes. The one about the
trans activist and Dave Chappelle spooning in the Netflix skybox brought the house of
cards down.
A second-tier order of business will make Kevin Spacey CEO of Disney. Right after the
Prez’s monster truck of a shlong knocks on Tulsi’s door. She knows her lines by heart.
Not that there’s much to memorize. Your basic Who’s There. Followed hard by: “My
what a big et cetera you have.” Going full-languor-ahead Southern Belle on his golden
faucet of a pumping piston.
Are we having fun yet. You bet your fatboy bottom dollar! says the dominatrix, a tiny
bald Russky humming “T’anks for the Mammaries.” His night raids on the kitchen are to
die for. The kitchen is in another country entirely. Or is it.
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4. DONNIE GOES
They hit the roof. Blow their tops. Flip out. Fly into a rage or off the handle. Lose their
cool. The vocabulary-builders vituperate. Still others go bananas. Cuckoo. Off the rails.
Postal. Ballistic.
Not for him. He’s always had a thing for Gene Roddenberry, the whole to-boldly-go-
where-no-man-has-gone-before enchilada. And to get the jump on Vlad the Blackmailer.
Too, that cutie-pie of a Pillsbury Dough Boy, Kim Jung Un. Not to forget the Big Cheese
in Iran, however he’s addressed by Persians who don’t want their heads chopped off.
Bibi.
Sure, Give ’Em Hell Harry handled the pregame warmup. (An exercise in throat-
clearing.) Not that the Man from Sh’ang-ry-Lago would ever use the word exercise or
allow it to be uddered in his presence. Technically, he won’t be the first, though high up
on his list, the one he carries around in Mike Flynn’s shirt pocket, is to outdistance that
damn asterisk.
But no matter how you slice it—factory-sliced American cheese, that is—he can, can,
can be the last.
CUE VERA LYNN VERSION OF “WE’LL MEET AGAIN,” AS ADAPTED FOR THE FINAL MONTAGE IN DR.
STRANGELOVE, MINUS THE GOING OUT FOR COCKTAILS AFTER AND THE BARELY-OVER-THE-LIMIT
DRIVE HOME TO PAY THE BABYSITTER FROM NEXT DOOR BEFORE LOOKING IN ON THE TWINS.
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5. DONNIE GOES
Our Gang by Philip Roth was a departure, a flat-out satire. Tricky Dick Nixon (let’s face
it, no one remembers anything anymore) goes to Hell and runs against Satan for the
position of Devil. Roth also famously said it was impossible for satirists to stay ahead of
reality. That was in 1974. Let’s live a little: here’s the exact quote: “You can’t write good
satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might
invent.” Roth in fact did find a way to stay ahead of reality, in that as far as we know,
there is no place in an afterlife called Hell, and Poor Richard did not get sent there and
decide to keep his political career in motion.
So where does that leave Donnie to go? Hell not being an option, since some smartass
Jew of a novelist beat him to the punch. He can, though, make our lives, and those of
others planetwide, Hell. How will that unfold, precisely? So many variables! Plus the
Rumsfeldian Unknown Unknowns.
Satire, ultimately, is where you find it. Speaking for myself, my funny bone is in a cast.
Can you, good lads and lassies, step in and take it take it take it to the limit from here?
Stay tuned.
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Donnie Goes is the house detective at Poetry Hotel.
He is the author of Who Goes There? A Blank Memoir In Blank Verse (Jorie Graham Press 1999).
Editor's Note: Each installment of Donnie Goes is part of an ongoing series.
Correspondence: donniegoes1(at)gmail(dot)com
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*OPPORTUNITY TO COLLABORATE WITH DONNIE GOES
Should we extend the series past Installment 5? That’s up to you! Here’s how:
Anytime after Installment 3 goes up, and you have a sense of the trajectory and spirit of the series,
spring boarding from a prompt below, or one of your own invention, paste a draft of a future
installment in the body of an email and transmit to donniegoes1(at)gmail(dot)com. Donnie Goes,
House Detective at Poetry Hotel, will timely review all drafts personally and select ones to \
collaborate with interactively. If your work successfully checks in to Room 56, you will receive
a $10 honorarium and co-authorship credit.
PROMPTS
to Barron’s frat mixer
to the beach
to the boneyard
to the border
to church
to Costco
to Disneyland
to the head
to Israel
to Mexico
to the moon, Alice
to the movies
to the opera
to preschool
to Russia
to Tim Hortons
to war
to the zoo
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