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The Juggler

—with special kudos to George Clooney, Whoopi Goldberg, Taylor Swift, Susan
Sarandon, Tom Hanks, Mark Hamill, Robert DeNiro and a cast of far too many 

If the Juggler has said it, it must needs be true
For the Juggler sees deeper than I do. Or you.
How he entertains crowds! Yea, his name is well known—
A celebrity with a compassionate tone.
We are fools if we choose not to listen and hark
When his sterling pronouncements shine forth like a spark.
So adept, this wise Juggler can toss (as is meet)
His beliefs through thin air. There is none can compete
With his knowledge or insight so sharply profound
Of our current events and the facts to be found
On the street, in the park, both in groups and alone.
Lend your ear when he speaks of both thruppence and throne
And the curses of Kings and their Fools, or the need
For the powers that be in the realm to pay heed
To his brilliant pronouncements on civil concerns,
Or those things consequential to how the world turns.

And the Juggler is aided in every surmise
By two puppets of note: Punch and Judy—so wise
Like the mimes and the acrobats offering views
On how people should vote and react to the News.
There’s the man with the monkey and organ that grinds
Who is proud to elucidate Science’s finds.
And of course when discussing the statecraft of towns
There are none whose pronouncements are smarter than clowns
And the tumblers and bumblers who puff themselves up
As if shrewdness were theirs and they’d drunk from the cup
Of keen wisdom and knowledge and all that is grand.
For the depth they provide, let us give them a hand!
And the roustabout actors, those players on stage—
Are they right to pontificate? Are they so sage
On the things they support? Should we all follow suit?
Or ignore them, deplore them and throw rotten fruit?

.

Punch and Judy: a traditional puppet show of English origin, featuring the characters Mr. Punch, a mischievous, sometimes violent figure, and his wife, Judy. The show often features a series of slapstick scenes, violence, and comedic moments.

.

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You’re in the Wrong Rally

Note: On October 17, 2024, Kamala Harris spoke at a campaign event in the battleground state of Wisconsin when two attendees shouted out the words “Jesus is Lord.” Unfazed, Harris stopped her remarks and countered. “Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally… I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.” The crowd of Democrats erupted into cheers as the protesters were forcibly removed.

I still recall how Harris tried to shame those men—
Those men of faith who shouted out the name of Christ.
How sickly smug she was, yet deer-in-headlights baffled.
She could have said, “All folks are welcome here. Amen!”
But to her sneering base that would not have sufficed.
They had to show contempt. Christ mocked. His death robe raffled.

Why do so many on the Left think faith is dead
Or else deserves to be? What is this smirking trust
(Bizarre to thoughtful souls) that they have all the answers?
They torture science and praise partisans instead;
They cling to bad ideas until they fail and rust,
Disdaining concrete facts and lauding necromancers.

The world devolves around them yet they never doubt
Their bedrock-deep commitment to those “settled” things
They claim are proven—past all reconsideration.
No self-reflection. No debate. It’s all worked out
So thoroughly and patently; their snarky stings
Are utterly divorced from good-faith contemplation.

Conservatives? All bad. Most white men. Christians. Jews.
And Trump. And Trump. And never fail to mention Trump.
How blind the Left! They cannot see the world’s mishaps
Are caused by ego-driven fantasies they choose.
Convinced they’re faultlessly correct from pate to rump,
They blithely burn things down as all their lies collapse.

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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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20 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Brian, how greatly I admire your scintillating poetry and done with a more difficult “abc” symmetry! Your profound messages come through loud and clear. For every poem of your’s I simply have to cheer. The “Juggler” and the “Rally” deserve unstinting praise for their trenchant message and questions that they raise!

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much, Roy! Scintillating is, for me, about as good as it gets! Thank you for noticing the abc symmetry in “Rally.” The juggler, for anyone curious about the meter, is in anapestic tetrameter.

      Reply
  2. Russel Winick

    I’m with Roy on these, Brian. Great work! And The Juggler is a terrific concept!

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you, Russel. As for concept, I was watching the news and they were discussing the women of The View who have made a career of appearing to know things that they don’t but nonetheless pontificate excessively on how we are supposed to feel about issues. (I have found Whoopi Goldberg to be particularly malign.) And then I wondered… why didn’t audiences care what the actors thought back in Elizabethan times? They were there to entertain. No one confused them for sages.

      Reply
  3. Mark Stellinga

    Brian, as these 2 excellent pieces thoroughly convey, as have several other similar pieces you’ve given us, you, as I am, are extremely concerned about the current ‘cultural’ circumstances we’re pretty much completely surrounded by. Reprehensible lemming-leaders abound that require relentless, focused effort to combat. I could never quite convince myself that DJT would win the 2025 presidential election, but he did! WE did! I thank The Big Guy for that. And now, under a massive umbrella of very conservative administrators, I’m confident that much, much better days lie ahead, and your ‘political poetry’ is the very sort of ‘literary artillery’ needed to help us get there – day by day. Great job, as always…

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much indeed, Mark! Always happy to provide “literary artillery!’ My concern for current social and political issues runs very deeply indeed. I think, in part, because I have studied a great deal of history and I know the difference between a mob and a movement as well as the difference between consensus and coercion.

      I am supremely grateful that Kamala Harris did not win the election because her hapless brand of woke vagary could never have steered the country through the challenges we are facing now. Could you imagine her having the cojones to bunker bust Iran’s nuclear facilities? The best she seems to be able to come up with is offering slurring bromides while projecting rainbow colors on the White House. Her illegitimate candidacy was an embarrassment.

      Reply
  4. Joseph S. Salemi

    Both poems are excellent, and both deal essentially with the same subject: the utterly absolute and rock-solid certainty of left-liberals that they are CORRECT on every single issue, and that those who disagree with them are always mistaken, uneducated, misinformed, unperceptive, or malevolent.

    For me this is the most enraging and insulting aspect of left-liberalism. It betrays an arrogance and self-conceit so total and impenetrable that they might as well be of granite. One simply CANNOT TALK to these people! They are as unresponsive to logic as the noble gases in the periodic table are to chemical reaction.

    I have noticed how left-liberals are always congratulating themselves, endlessly. “Aren’t we smart? Aren’t we up-to-date? Aren’t we highly moral? Aren’t we deeply sensitive? Aren’t we sophisticated and cool? Aren’t we unlike the backward types who are our enemies?” These attitudes aren’t even conscious — they are second-nature to left-liberals.

    Reply
    • Mark Stellinga

      Joe, I thought you’d get a kick out of this piece, which was inspired by the term, ‘folie à deux’, which I spotted and was intrigued by in one of ‘your’ recent comments to something Susan penned (I believe?). I’m really bad about piggy-backing and apologize to Brian if it helps – 🙂

      On ‘Folie à deux Disorder’
        

      ‘Folie à deux Disorder’ is a psychiatric syndrome where a person – telepathically – imbues
      A stranger’s mind – despite the fact the two have never met – with radical, but correlating views
      the DONER’s mind ‘Politically’ condones…

      And when some damn ‘Progressive’ with this ‘folie à deux disorder’ invades a naive youngsters’ fragile mind,
      I’m tellin’ you it’s really hard to ‘de-conscript’ a victim – once their shattered parents come to find
      Their kid has joined the ranks of – ‘Leftist’ clones!

      And once their child’s infected with this merciless affliction – the discombobulation of their brain –
      The chance that they’ll recover in advance of what it does to link them with the sort of friends they’ll gain,
      (Who’ll groom them as required to make them fit),

      Very quickly plummets as their skulls are plied with promises that – ‘common-sensers’ know to be a lie…
      And if you actually know someone who’s plagued with ‘folie à deux’, we need to cross our fingers that they die
      ‘Cause the ‘guarantees’ they pose are — full o’ shit!

      Reply
      • Brian Yapko

        Mark, I don’t mind you “piggy-backing” in the least. I very much enjoyed your own trenchant poem on the subject of the corruption of childhood development and the attack on their reasoning skills suich that they lose any ability to differentiate common sense from indoctrination. I had to look up the definition of “folie a dieux” and it’s particularly insightful. Mr. AI defines it this way:

        “Folie à deux” is a French term meaning “madness of two”. It refers to a rare psychiatric syndrome where delusional beliefs are transmitted from one person to another, typically in a close relationship. It’s also known as shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder. The term can also be used more broadly to describe any shared delusion or mental illness between two people in close association.”

        Absolutely apt to transcribe the transmission of leftism and, in particular, transgender ideology and DEI. But I am also reminded of people driving alone in their cars wearing masks. Such vacant impressionability saddens me.

    • Brian Yapko

      Joe, thank you for the kind words on the poems and thank you even more for telling it like it is. Yes, these poems are two different examinations of left liberal smugness. The Juggler explores the bizarre modern trend of leftist performers injecting their vapid opinions into public discourse — simply because social media now makes that a simple thing. It has become ubiquitous and it is gross to see people “inspired” by the ramblings of Mark Hamill or George Takei or going to our performers for political advice (whether it be Mark Hamill or George Takei or (heaven help us) Rosie O’Donnell.) In fact, the sudden emergence of celebrities as important political voices is as weird as it would be if ancient Romans breathlessly waited for a statement by their favorite gladiators concerning the import of bread from Egypt or the latest attack on the Germans across the Rhine. Why would any sane person care about Taylor Swift’s endorsement?

      As for “Rally,” you nailed that smug, condescending attitude of left-liberals who are so lacking in self-awareness that they will never dig deep enough to recognize that they have become so highly subjective and so deeply partisan that they can no longer be fair. Even now, having lost an election decisively and having it clear that 80,000,000 Americans are rejecting their credos, they refuse to take responsibility. As you point out, they come up with tortured, condescending theories to explore why anyone would vote for Trump — racism, sexism, conspiracy, ignorance, fascism. The left liberals (forgive the crudeness) never once apply Occam’s Razor and consider the possibility that it is their shit that stinks.

      Reply
  5. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Brian, I just love “The Juggler” with its smoothly crafted, rhyming couplets that romp along with a dark humor and that captures the hubris of those failing entertainers, you have tapped into the manic Punch-and-Judy mindset of those plastic idols of the silver screen to reveal what is at their rotten core. I am particularly taken with: “Lend your ear when he speaks of both thruppence and throne / And the curses of Kings and their Fools…” and: “There’s the man with the monkey and organ that grinds / Who is proud to elucidate Science’s finds.” – what pictures you conjure of a circus-mentality that sullies society just as history warns. Very well done, indeed!

    For me, “You’re in the Wrong Rally” is the bitter icing on the dry-humored cake of the first poem. It serves to highlight just how horribly wrong these wholly out-of-touch, godless goons are. Never before has there been such a notable divide between right and oh so very wrong. Your poems say it perfectly. Brian, thank you!

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you so much for the generous comment, Susan! I’m glad you found the romping in the anapests and the fun in the piece despite the serious subject.

      As for those “godless goons”, I confess myself completely bewildered by their level of confidence in a universe where what we don’t know and can never know massively outweighs the tiny fraction that humanity has actually figured out. As for the divide you describe… I find it terribly frightening and have great concern for the future. It’s not as if we have two different versions of the same event at stake. We have two completely different versions of reality. I choose the one where I don’t have to pretend men are women or that throwing molotov cocktails qualifies as peaceful protest. I’m tremendously grateful, Susan, that we’re on the same page.

      Reply
  7. Brian Yapko

    Mike, I wouldn’t go to Barbara Streisand for scientific knowledge either! Nor to Lin-Manuel Miranda, or Jane Fonda, or Leonardo DiCaprio or the stars of “Wicked…” No, not even Oprah! Now Dr. Phil is another matter.

    Thanks for commenting, Mike! Grateful that you liked the poem!

    Reply
  8. Bill Liimatainen

    Brian,

    The Juggler drew me in to The Society for Classical Poets. I loved the sharp satire and those you chose for its crosshairs! I look forward to reading more of your work. Until then, I know what to do with any fruit that has aged well past its expiration date!

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you so much, Bill. This is a very encouraging comment. To try to write sharp satire is one of my goals — the times seem to call for it! As for that fruit, I understand that tomatoes (botanically a fruit) work particularly well.

      Reply
  9. C.B. Anderson

    The idea that all leftist liberals are both stupid and ignorant would be silly and vacuous were it not for the fact that they prove it time after time. It’s gotten to where I can’t even talk to some of my neighbors, the ones who listen the blather issued by NPR et al.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you for reading and commenting, C.B. I tend to subscribe to the Ronald Reagan understanding of leftist liberals: “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

      Alas, in the 36 years since Reagan left office I’m afraid it’s gotten worse rather than better.

      Reply
  10. David Whippman

    Brian, “The Juggler” was inspired. I am so sick of actors and musicians trying to lecture us about Israel, the climate and anything else. Thank the Lord for people like J K Rowling and Ricky Gervais who refuse to run with the trendy herd.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you so much, David! I’m glad we’re on the same page. It makes me sick to hear these spoiled, indoctrinated, ignorant fools abuse their fame to try to be world-influencers on things they know nothing about. In the early days of television and the Golden Age of movies, celebrities were much smarter about shutting the heck up. This phenomenon of celebrities pontificating as if they knew something special is a modern curse. Yes, I am very grateful — especially for J K Rowling — who uses her celebrity for good and common sense. She knows what she is talking about in trans issues as a victim of domestic abuse who was closely involved with women’s shelters and knows the need to protect women as women. She’s back on the list of billionaires — I believe as the world’s highest paid author — and I don’t begrudge her a penny.

      Reply

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