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The Song of Nina Jankowicz

The lies burst ripe and rife today.
__Their juice spurts forth with pride.
The thirst of those who’ve gone astray
__Is quenched by gossip’s tide.
My job is drenched in poisoned fruit.
I’m Nina. I will kill the root
__Of grapevines far and wide.
My Ministry of Truth will crush
All fallacy. My aim’s to hush…

To silence bombast on the breeze
__From traps that blast hot air
At those I wish to serve and please
__With truth because I care.
Independent thought’s a crime.
I’m Nina and I’m here in time
__To sort the foul from fair.
I’ll track each cheat. I’m here to beat
This ill-wind spill of shrill deceit.

All finds and facts that don’t align
__With data of my choosing
Is but a sure and certain sign
__That cunning clues are bruising
Each hoodwinked dope too dull to cope.
I’m Nina and I hand out hope.
__I won’t have cons confusing
The witless twits with dodgy creeds.
I’m here to meet the public needs.

Disinformation is your foe,
__Misinformation too.
My brand of truth’s the way to go—
__I know what’s best for you.
So lend your ear to what I say.
I’ll bend your ear—my bosses pay
__For all the proof I skew.
I’m Nina and you’ll find I’m kind…
But only if I own your mind.

.

.

Susan Jarvis Bryant has poetry published on Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online. She also has poetry published in TRINACRIA, Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems anthology, and in Openings (anthologies of poems by Open University Poets in the UK). Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition, and has been nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize.

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37 Responses

  1. Russel Winick

    You, like Mr. Orwell, have totally nailed today’s Left Susan!

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Thank you very much, Russel. These days the left and the right seem to have melded into one overbearing Global monster with claws scratching in every corner of our business. I hope we can stave off its fatal bite.

      Reply
  2. C.B. Anderson

    Perfectly lovely, Susan. You have nailed this leftist bitch to the stake (not a cross) that she deserves. It’s hard to take this current misadministration seriously, unless as an example of what not to do. Let’s hope that the Supremes will show some constitutional spine and squelch this abomination before things get really ugly.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      I think we’re on the road to ugliness, C.B. – a route that demeans and ostracizes anyone who doesn’t fall obediently in line. Let’s hope before brains are severed from spines and we’re all turned into hive-mind robots, the Supremes will rise up and shut this evil down. I still see a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

      Reply
  3. Y F CHONG

    Thank you for saying the truth in poetry….wish you could get someone to sing it to Nina

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      You are most welcome. I have a feeling that if anyone sung this to Nina she would shut it down before it reached the second stanza… sadly, the thought-control police think satire is a hate crime.

      Reply
  4. Brian Yapko

    This atrocious woman deserves to be skewered and you do it so admirably, Susan, in a poem that not only shows off your use of poetic devices with great aplomb but which has a really interesting rhyme scheme (a-b-a-b-c-c-b-d-d) This rhyme scheme deliciously defies predictability and logic, rather like your subject (who is anything but delicious.) Now someone please explain to me why this administration is creating a Disinformation Governance Board and what that exactly means. I have images of Dolores Umbridge reveling in abuse of power in Harry Potter as she forces the truth-telling hero to carve the sentence “I will not tell lies” over and over into his own arm.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Brian, thank you very much for your comment. I love your Dolores Umbridge observation. I think the “Disinformation Governance Board” has been created because the truth is so heretical these days, people should be punishing you for spreading it… the Government has a gluttonous lust to twist our minds to the point of torture just in case we decide to make an informed decision based on facts outside their realm of control… in the post-truth era, honesty is a crime.

      I think I stole the form from a William Cullen Bryant poem. I wanted a sing-song spoonful of sugar to help the reader digest the unpalatable message of doom. If anyone still wonders what tyranny means… this is it. Joe Stalin outlawed the truth in the interest of power. It’s Joe Biden’s turn.

      Reply
  5. Shaun C. Duncan

    Nicely done, Susan. I was glad to see that although you chose to use Ms Jankowicz as the subject for your poem, you used her as a stand-in for the Ministry of Truth itself. Too much commentary has focused on the personality of the head (her previous social media posts, what she has on her bookshelf etc) which seems to suggest she is merely unqualified for the position when it is the position itself which is abhorrent, no matter who fills it. Of course, she seems to be a suitably vile choice for the role.

    As usual, the prosody sparkles and I’m in awe of your ability to produce such fine work at pace with the current news cycle.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Shaun, I am thrilled to receive an encouraging comment from a fellow satirist of your caliber – thank you. I’m fully aware that Nina Jankowicz is a tool of tyranny. I believe that strange quirks are an asset when it comes to diverting the public’s attention from their loss of freedoms. We’re so busy mocking trivia, we miss the main point… and the main point is horrifying.

      Reply
  6. Margaret Coats

    Susan, we need this. There is another song up about the Pravda nanny, and may the number increase faster than the number of bureaucrat positions in the abhorrent agency. It seems disinformation is an academic specialty that prepares college students for jobs in the mainstream media. Thus the feeder schools and entry-level employees had already formed ranks to follow the capstone commander.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Margaret, thank you very much. As ever, you make informed and very important points. It’s a shame most of this goes above heads that should be exploding with rage over the shackles waiting for brains who crave an opinion from anyone other than a government-paid source. It’s painful to witness the worship of government-funded “experts”.

      Reply
  7. Paul Freeman

    These mouthpieces of disinformation are indeed a sad phenomenon of our modern era. Previously of course there was Kelly-Anne Conway (proponent of the fictitious Bowling Green Massacre), not to mention the banning of the White House daily press briefing.

    Orwell did indeed recognise how news and revised history would be used nefariously by authoritarian regimes.

    Never a true word than: “My brand of truth’s the way to go / I know what’s best for you.”

    A timely reminder. May we all retain the power of free thought.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      A timely reminder indeed, Paul. The only way we’ll retain the power of free thought is allowing everyone that privilege. We certainly have our part to play in that by encouraging robust discussions, quitting the hate-speech, pity-party rhetoric, and acknowledging that there are expert voices outside the government-bought clique. Let’s hope we all come to our senses before every last vestige of free speech is quashed by the Disinformation Governance Boards of this increasingly wicked world.

      Reply
  8. Joseph S. Salemi

    The fact that a raving, semi-educated lunatic like Nina Jankowicz can be named to the “Disinformation Governance Board” of Homeland Security is a clear sign that our current government is planning a complete disembowelment of free speech in America.

    For left-liberals, “disinformation” means opinions that you don’t like, and that you want to suppress.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      I agree with you wholeheartedly, Joe. Although, I believe that the left and right have morphed into a power-crazed monster that doesn’t have its citizens’ interests at heart. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

      Reply
  9. Mike Bryant

    First I just love the way you write. I am very glad that we have you as a very powerful fact checker. It’s the freedom of speech that’s available here at SCP that makes it possible. It is the rough and tumble of discussions that help each of us arrive at our own conclusions… some have called it the marketplace of ideas. There is no reason ever for any government to police speech or thought. If a Government is truthful and working for the people it should have no fear of any speech because the truth will out as long as it isn’t prohibited. The problem arises when the powerful get to decide what truth is. Nina Jankowicz has written that even truth, if it is deemed harmful, must be censored… she calls it malinformation. Truly, this new bureaucracy cannot stand.

    Here’s a look at the new truth czar from a truth forward perspective:

    https://www.revolver.news/2022/04/nina-jankowicz-bidens-new-minister-of-truth-moaning-myrtle-rundown/

    Reply
    • Russel Winick

      Mike – here’s Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ classic remedy for false information:

      “If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

      Justice Louis Brandeis
      Whitney v. California
      1927

      Reply
      • Mike Bryant

        Perfect, Russell, but that was before the globalists took over. I’m pretty sure that we are both involved in malinformation now, truth which angers our new global masters. When Nina cleanses the internet, Brandeis will be a non person.

  10. Dave Etchell

    Brilliant poem Susan– I was thinking of doing one but words fail me– how do you describe a –deluded swivel eyed megalomaniac, war criminal, semi house trained micro dicked ex KGB thug, pathetic pervert mass murdering pygmy of a bully, like Putin?

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Did I miss something, Mr. Etchell? Putin has what connection with this poem?

      Reply
      • Dave Etchell

        Not in USA don’t know who the Nina is — I just made the assumption that she was one of Putin’s truth distorters — It could easily apply to what his propagandists are doing.

    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Dave, I love your forthright way with words. We have plenty of poems on this site written about the dastardly Putin. Perhaps you’d like to join in. Here’s a link” https://classicalpoets.org/2022/02/26/share-your-poetry-on-the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine/#/

      I happen to think our governments aren’t doing us any favours here or in the UK. They certainly don’t have their citizens’ interests in mind and have lied to us every which way. They lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. They’ve made a mess of Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, and countless other regions in the Middle East at our expense – we’ve paid with taxes and lives. My question is, why are we (America and the UK) pushing for another war in the name of ‘democracy’ when we’re still hanging our heads in shame over the countless unnecessary deaths we’ve caused in the previous ones? It’s certainly not to save democracy in the Ukraine, a country that lost its democracy when Volodymyr Zelenskyy imprisoned members of the opposition party dictator style to ensure his win. Why are we trusting leaders who have fingers in financial pies all over the Ukraine? Just look at Biden, biolabs, and Burisma for starters and I’m sure Boris and Blair are getting their pockets lined in arms deals that make warmongers rich. As for propaganda, I believe our own governments are pushing plenty of that our way.

      Dave, I’m officially a cynic… after all the lies I’ve heard from politicians in the UK and here in the US, why would I trust a single thing politicians push? As far as the Middle East is concerned, we’re certainly not angels… quite the opposite in fact. On top of that, we live in crumbling covid-cowed countries that are on the brink of financial ruin… and we’re promising to save the world with money the people don’t have.

      I smell disaster. Perhaps I should stick to poems on Grecian Urns and Autumn 😉

      Reply
  11. Cheryl Corey

    When I heard the clip on the radio of her singing a la Mary Poppins, I thought are you *^&$ kidding me? This is someone who’s a government official? God help us. Susan, it never ceases to amaze me how you whip this stuff up!

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Cheryl, I’m in full agreement. God help us, indeed! I channel my ire into poetry… that way I save Mike’s ears and nerves.

      Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Thank you very much, David. My mind is a poetry machine… I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. It certainly keeps me busy.

      Reply
  13. Sally Cook

    Susan, I always admire your ability to link nouns, verbs and adjectives in an interesting way; you have a remarkable ability here, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of such combinations which you use very well.
    But more than this, you can see truth, and are always on the watch for its enemies.

    This time you have managed to add a dark and dismal atmosphere of evil.
    What a fine atmosphere of hypocritical harangue! I cannot applaud you enough!

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Dearest Sally, it’s always lovely to receive a comment from you and I am glad you’re applauding this poem, a poem I was compelled to write when I heard the news. I think everyone should know we’re heading down the road to serfdom if we don’t apply the brakes now. If the nighttime news was replaced with satirical poetry, the world would be all the better for it… if only. 🙂

      Reply
  15. Breauna Michelle

    This is BRILLIANT! I am so happy to find a poetry site like this, so alive and awake (but not woke). Reading this and a couple of other poems so far on this website gives me hope for the current and future state of poetry, I can’t wait to submit my own here. Thank you again for your clever wit and talent.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      I’m thrilled to hear you’ve enjoyed a couple of poems on this wonderful site… I look forward to reading some of yours. Thank you!

      Reply
  17. Joseph S. Salemi

    This bitch Jankovich is finished. Her “Disinformation Board” has been canceled, and she herself has resigned in disgrace.

    I think we all played a part in this. Congratulations!

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      We pack one helluva poetic punch here on the SCP – many are still reeling from the shock of it. 😉

      Reply

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