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    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.

-------------------------

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.

 

-------------------------

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.

​​

-------------------------

 

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

-------------------------

*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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