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News of a Coup

The news of a coup hits the headlines.
No ears prick to listen or hear.
The proof plucked from yesterday’s grapevines
Has dried with the last dusty tear
Of natives once proud of their history
Till tyrants tore roots from their tree
In lands where the truth is a mystery
And only the tricksters are free.

A wizard of lava-tongued wonder,
A weaver of tangerine mirth,
Rumbles of imminent thunder—
A tempest will remedy Earth.
A storm will lash traitorous sinners
Who tainted a nation with lies.
The wise warn there aren’t any winners
In lands mourning logic’s demise.

The TV trots out tales of treason
Too weathered to warrant alarm.
The righteous are robbed of all reason.
The healers continue to harm.
The greedy are gorging with gusto.
The oracles drivel and drone.
The wolfish have stolen tomorrow.
The sheepish are chilled to the bone.

The news of a coup is forgotten.
It fades in the blather and breeze
As something that smells rather rotten
(A something that nobody sees)
Harasses the nostrils of masses
And startles the hearts of a few—
As sickly and thick as molasses,
It chokes every maverick view.

The news of the coup’s barred and buried,
Flagged false by a fact-checking buff.
The wits of the worn and the wearied
Are warped by the gaseous guff
Puffing like smoke from the fires
That scorch grounded notions in flight—
Stoked by the loons and the liars
Who claim what was wrong is now right.

.

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Utterly Butterless

—inspired by Bill Gates’ new lab-grown butter alternative

She bought a stick of butter from a snake.
She spread a viscid dollop on her bread.
The dairy fairy warned her it was fake,
Yet still she gorged then went ahead and fed
Her honey with a thick and crispy crust
Smeared with lab-grown grease. This ghastly paste
Of spooky goop was slurry none could trust.
No tests. No warnings. Made with waste and haste,
Then greenlit by the gastro-ghouls with glee.
One serpent-sanctioned, frankenbutter bite
And sweetie-pie dipped down on buckled knee—
His grumbling gut knew something wasn’t right.
‘Twas then his lunch and lover lost appeal—
His heart would race for nothing less than real.

.

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Susan Jarvis Bryant is a poet originally from the U.K., now living on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

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2 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Your vivid scenes are stark and stunning replete with amazing alliteration. There is a creative depth, not just of imagery, but of content and context. Coups and rumors of coups seem to plague the news frequently. Neither would I trust any “butter” coming from a Bill Gates lab. It is probably “microsoft!”

    Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    These are two very good poems in terms of structure and diction. But I do have to bring up the clarity issue again.

    Let’s start by considering “Utterly Butterless.” It works perfectly because of the epigraph explaining the invention of a new lab-grown butter. The poem’s language and rhetoric and imagery are on fire for the reader because that epigraph provides the spark that ignites the reader’s understanding. When you finish the poem, you know that this new fake butter is a stupid idea.

    That is not true for the first poem. There is no epigraph, and the title is unspecific. We are awash in coups, so which coup is being described here? The left thinks that January 6 was an attempted coup; many of us on the right believe that the rigged election of 2020 was a coup; most of the mainstream media outlets seem to think that Trump’s 2024 re-election was a coup. And many government changes through history can be called “coups”

    As a result, the poem could be read in contradictory ways. Is the poem expressing sarcastic contempt for anyone who believes in a coup? If so, which one? Is the poem expressing anger that real coups are NOT believed in? If so, which ones? Do coups really happen, or are they simply propaganda stunts? I don’t understand if the speaker of the poem disbelieves in coups, or is angry about one that happened, or is warning us against coups.

    An epigraph would have gone a long way to avoiding these uncertainties. If there’s something in The Epoch Times that gives us direct evidence of a specific coup or attempted coup, quote it verbatim in an epigraph.

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