Donald Trump writes a poem

He'd heard from Eliot that there were only three subjects fit for poetry: birth, copulation, death. At least he thought he'd heard Eliot say that, though maybe that wasn't quite right. It sounded right, it sounded good, it made sense in a beginning, middle, and end kind of way. Birth was and is the beginning; copulation's the middle, the fun part, keeping birth going; and death's the end, no doubt about it. We could do without death, Trump thought, though many great poems have been written about it, and may more will undoubtedly be written in the future.

Anyway, he'd take a stab at a copulation poem. Something in iambs, so that it could rhyme with lamb or ham or scram, or maam. Poetry rhymes, that's all there is to it. Quoth the raven nevermore.

Trump began writing. He put a word down on paper and then another word, and so on. He made that kind of face he likes to make, like he's so smart and everbody else is so dumb. He loosened his neck-tie and dipped his quill in Diet Coke. People in the background complimented him.

Writing poetry was actually kind of fun, like playing golf and making all pars whether you really made par or not, and the way Trump played golf he always made par because he said so, unless he said he made birdie, which is one less than par as everybody knows.

Writing poetry is kind of a feminine thing to do, Trump thought, laying his pen down, musing on the mysteries of sexual identity. Maybe being a woman isn't a bad thing to be. Trump's daughter was a woman, as was Trump's third wife. Trump could almost imagine being a woman--it was sort of momentarily liberating; what he couldn't almost imagine is being a man who has sex with another man. That kind of transaction just didn't pencil for Trump.

Mid-poem, Trump gave up writing and became the minimalist he was always destined to become. Why use ten words when one will do instead? Poetry's the art of compression, Trump liked to say, something he's sure he heard Dr. Williams say, or was it Pound, or Yeats, or the Jap Ryokan, or Gertrude Stein, now there was a crazy, crazy person.