.

New York, New York

“Give up Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten
Island too…” (with apologies to Rodgers & Hart)

How many songs about New York are in my repertoire?
I don’t think I can sing them now. The city’s history.
Give my alarm to Broadway. Coney Island, au revoir.
You’ve picked a Marxist hatemonger! A baffling mystery
Which has my friends and family despairing in alarm
As anxious as can be for me to now convey their dread.
They fear an antisemite who desires only harm
Not just to Israel but who also seems to wish Jews dead.
This is a man who calls for boycotts of the Jewish state,
Attacking Jewish students, barricading them from college.
He’s vaunted terror, praised Hamas, and spread their lying hate
Manipulating the unschooled with false, fictitious “knowledge.”
He hopes to yank New York about as left as left can go.
His goals and policies are hateful. No, it’s not his faith.
But he’s a Marxist antisemite who will cause great woe.
Nor should we want the city governed by a Stalin wraith—
A man who gladly sees Manhattan’s streets blocked by a mob,
Who wears the badge of Soros, Bernie Sanders, AOC;
Who likes the thought that New York’s wealth is there for him to rob,
And with illegals wants to grow some Leftist colony.
He hopes to turn New York into Havana and Hanoi
With just a touch of Baghdad and a large dose of Beijing.
New York, what are you thinking? Do you want to fall like Troy?
To give the city up to all the evils he will bring?
New York, you’ve volunteered to be the Democrats’ piñata—
Content to aid their goal to bash you into smithereens.
You choose a man who wants to “Globalize the Intifada?”
You’re choosing death. There is no gray. There are no in-betweens.

.

.

Brian Yapko is a retired lawyer whose poetry has appeared in over fifty journals.  He is the winner of the 2023 SCP International Poetry Competition. Brian is also the author of several short stories, the science fiction novel El Nuevo Mundo and the gothic archaeological novel  Bleeding Stone.  He lives in Wimauma, Florida.

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18 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Brian, I just saw the alarming/terrifying news of the winner of the far-left democratic mayoral race and am impressed with the accuracy and timeliness of your outstanding description of what awaits not only New Yorkers, but the entire country from schools and academic institutions, to the local, city, state, and national government. I am saddened and angry.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you, Roy. I too am saddened and angry. The Big Apple is in a death spiral and has learned nothing from the experiences of London and Paris. What really gets me is this is happening 24 years after 9/11. And he believes that 9/11 was an “inside job.” Liberals are so hypnotized by Progressive causes that they can’t seem to see the damage they inflict or the suicidal choices they make. It’s exhausting.

      Reply
  2. Michael Vanyukov

    As is well known, people get the government they deserve. Unfortunately, many end up as collateral damage from that as well, for no fault of their own. “Give my alarm to Broadway. Coney Island, au revoir” – are we going the way of Europe? Beautifully put; the meter, so fitting, takes care of my usual reluctance to be too close to sordid political details in poetry. Thank you, Brian!

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you, Michael. I would not have thought New Yorkers would willingly flush their great city down the toilet of Marxist leftism but I guess one must never underestimate people’s idiocy and corruption. I just don’t know which is worse. Yes, people do tend to get the government they deserve. It’s like a video game to them. They like living in interesting times.

      Reply
  3. Adam Wasem

    “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”–H.L. Mencken. Yes, it’s sad for those with a connection to New York City, but something like this has been a long time coming–NYC is 68% minority now, 40% foreign-born; import the 3rd world, become the 3rd world. Unless Trump pulls off some miracle of mass deportation there–unlikely given the entrenched local resistance–socialism is the status quo going forward. Best bet is to get out while you still can.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank You, Adam. I fully agree. If New York falls the way London has fallen, there won’t be much of a Big Apple left by the time Mamdani’s term is ended. I read an interesting article this morning that basically describes New York now as a Democrat island of insanity in a country that is otherwise waking up. Other than Newsom and Waltz, the Democrats’ primary leaders are New Yorkers (including Sanders who is from Brooklyn.) New York is presenting a Democrat party unmasked. They learned nothing from this last election. They will learn the hard way. And we will all pay a price.

      Reply
  4. Mark Stellinga

    Brian, this is still another of those ‘no way a candidate like that can win a primary, much less get elected’ catastrophes – even in NY’! We need to collectively cross our fingers that one of ‘ours’ takes shot at what he’s after come November. These political bonfires are exhilarating to light, for me, when I whip one up. Great job!

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much, Mark. I would never have thought such a one as Mamdani could win New York — a city with the second largest Jewish population in the world after Israel. But the mob is fickle, they love their bread and circuses, and the polls never seem to reflect reality.

      Reply
  5. Joseph S. Salemi

    Brian, this little socialist prick Zohran Mamdani won a plurality in the Democrat primary because there were several candidates, and because the main Democratic hopeful (Andrew Cuomo) is violently hated by many otherwise moderate and conservative voters, who will never forgive him for murdering their loved ones during the Covid hysteria.

    Add to this the fact that there was a vicious campaign for Mamdani subsidized by an array of left-liberal pressure groups. The current mayor knew that he had no chance to be re-nominated by the Democrat Party after daring to cooperate with Donald Trump, so he withdrew from candidacy and is running on an independent ticket. His decision brought out all the left-wing freaks from the woodwork, and this allowed a well-financed piece of garbage like Mamdani to win.

    The man is everything you say: a pro-Hamas antisemite, a Marxist, an economic illiterate, and a crypto-terrorist (he wants the Intifada to be world-wide). He’s even dumber than AOC. The man is so dangerous and insane that even the New York Times opposed him.

    There are a lot of very stupid people in New York City, many of them in the upper echelons of academia, the chattering classes, and even our gutless and clueless churches. They go on copious crying jags if they hear the word “Gaza.” All we can hope for is that Mamdani will be beaten in the runoff, and if not, then in the general election by the thin majority of New Yorkers who don’t subscribe to leftist insanity and Jew-hate.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you for commenting, Joe. I was hoping to hear from you — particularly since you are probably the SCP poet with the most skin in the game. I was somewhat surprised that Cuomo ran primarily because I knew he was a wounded candidate. But to go with Mamdani? Who only first became a citizen in 2018? Who is on record wanting to defund the police? Who thinks 9/11 was an inside job? And only 24 years later would elect a terror-supporter? I’m still stunned that there are enough New Yorkers who are naive enough (or are they the cynical ones?) to give this man the keys to City Hall.

      I do indeed hope and pray that New York sobers up enough to elect someone who is not going to ruin what many consider the greatest city in the world. My father was from Brooklyn. In his final years, my grandfather lived in the Bronx. I used to spend a lot of time in New York — primarily Manhattan. What NYC voluntarily chooses — along with the consequences it will inevitably face — distresses me deeply.

      Reply
  6. Cheryl A Corey

    Your gray matter was definitely firing on all cylinders for this composition! One has to wonder if, just as DNC power brokers conspired to derail Bernie Sanders, they’ll find a way to stymie this radical socialist upstart.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you so much, Cheryl. Yes, my “gray matter” was on fire yesterday morning when I wrote this in a rage. I hate stupidity. I hate depravity. NYC’s choice manifested both in spades. I sure hope you’re right about the power brokers intervening. I had forgotten about how Sanders was winning all the primaries in 2020 — until he wasn’t and Joe Biden, campaigning from his basement, was suddenly so hot that he even garnered the votes of dead people, fictitious people and illegal aliens. I suppose the amoral DNC is capable of anything.

      Reply
  7. Jerald Groner

    Thank you Brian for calling out the diseased body politic of NYC. As usual your topical poetry speaks with moral clarity in the face of rampant evil.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you so much, Jerry! If not for your support this poem — and literally dozens of others — would not exist. And if I have moral clarity, it is because your insights and sturdiness of spine always inspire me.

      Reply
      • Russel Winick

        Great poem Brian! After Biden won and I was worried, a wise friend opined that the Left always goes too far, causing the pendulum to swing back. She was right. Let’s hope it also happens in NYC, pronto.

      • Brian Yapko

        Thank you very much, Russel. Here’s hoping indeed!

  8. Joseph S. Salemi

    Hatred of Israel has sweltered under the surface of left-liberalism for quite a while now, but it finally exploded after the October 7 massacre, and this happened EVEN BEFORE the Israelis counterattacked in Gaza. Only days after the initial Hamas attack, I heard students in the streets of Manhattan screaming “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Jew-free!” (Jew-free, from the German Judenrein, is a direct borrowing from Nazi terminology).

    Persons born after 1990 have been totally propagandized at all school levels to be anti-Zionist and antisemitic. Many of these voters (the “Tik-Tok brain-rot constituency,” as National Review describes them) made up the activist workers and supporters of Mamdani. But more important were the very wealthy leftists who gave huge sums to the campaign of the Hamas apologist.

    Mamdani’s major support group is wealthy white left-liberals from Park Slope and the Upper West Side. These are the real poison in America today. It’s important to remember that Mamdani comes from an affluent family, and is a Harvard graduate.

    “Nomen est omen.” An anagram of the guy’s name is “I, Madman.”

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you for these additional insights, Joe. There is a form of virulent Israel Derangement Syndrome out there that is completely irrational and deeply blood-thirsty. I don’t know of a way to fight this when facts don’t matter — especially if they interfere with a good hate narrative.

      “I, Madman.” I will remember that. I’m sure it’s quite true.

      Reply

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