Prosody and Trump

A bit of a jeu d'esprit

Doncha get a kick when metrical feet emerge from an item of news? According to the Washington Post, another batch of documents, from the ones that were stolen by Trump, have been found in Florida. In a storage locker. Some of them are classified.

            "There has been a lengthy and fierce battle," reports the Post, "between Trump's attorneys and the Justice Department . . . "

            I know! Not metrical, that. Although it might have been:

                   There's been a fierce and lengthy battle

                   'Tween Justice and lawyers of Trump.

            "A fierce and lengthy battle" is iambic. Switch lengthy and fierce and it's not. Don't today's reporters care to let their copy sing?

            But wait! That locker, where the documents turned up? According to the story here's what else that locker held:

            "It was suits and swords and wrestling belts and all sorts of things."

            Now we're rolling. Shades of "Walrus and the Carpenter":

                   Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,

                   And cabbages and kings.

            Or Robert Louis Stevenson:

                  The world is so full of a number of things,

                   I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

            If I seem giddy, here is why: The inquiries regarding Trump are gathering rhythm --  momentum, even. Who found that there were documents mixed in with cosplay junk? Trump's own lawyers. Trump had sworn to them that there were no secrets there. "Oh client says . . . ," they told the judge --

            "Oh really?" said the judge. "And will you swear to that yourselves?" The lawyers checked. It turned out Trump had lied.

            "Do you trust," the court had asked, "your client's truthiness?"

            "Wellll," responded the lawyers, "We'll get back to you on that."

            It makes a bad impression. Trump looks less like a king than a cabbage.

          A Limerick, Looking Forward

                                    He thinks, this fellow named Trump,

                                    He can make us, all of us, jump.

                                                But finally shameless

                                                May become aimless,

                                    And bump, b'dump, b'dump.