To Donald Trump

Shut your Big Apple Pie Hole.
Be aware: pigeons can nest
in your hair. Hillary
Clinton is smarter, blonder, and rocks a suit
better than you do.
You make Jeb Bush look like F.D.R.
You make Mike Huckabee look like any Gandhi.
Rosie O'Donnell has more spot–on liners about you
than you have stocks, bonds, or former employees.
Again, shut your Pie Hole.
Make way for Bernie Sanders.
His big donors are teachers, people like me;
people who work for a living.
Speaking of class, erase your name
from Sanity's Dry–Erase board.
Remember the USFL? You lost
the New Jersey Generals. You lost
the Miss America Pageant. You lost
The Apprentice. Board rooms rejoiced
everywhere. So did your ex–wives. Stop talking
about borders. Stop talking
about yourself, and for god's sake, stop talking
as if you own The White House. Confine your comments
to your tower, where your tenants' sighs
rise and fall in expensive elevators,
and you can laugh maniacally
until you wet your pants
and take as many bites out of The Big Apple
as your cold heart desires.

To Fred Grandy

— Iowa Governor Candidate, 1994

You never had a chance.
You made a name for yourself as Gopher Smith, a Yeoman Purser
Going for rotten jokes and shapely women on TV, on The Love Boat.
You went to Harvard and graduated Magna Cum Laude, yet
You made a living playing dumb on a critically maligned sit–com.
Be glad that you got to work with Charo. Coochie Coochie.
Be glad that Aaron Spelling didn't fire you like he did Shannen Doherty. Hoochie Mama.
The laugh track was your life's blood, bud.
Be happy with that.
Be happy that you got to hang with Ted Lange. Out of sight.
The rest of the cast as well: especially Gavin MacLeod. Love was all around.
You lost the election to Terry Branstad. Incumbent. Incompetent.
You make my nephew laugh, just like I did when I watched you as a kid:
Adjusting the volume, the rabbit ears on the family Zenith
While my parents had loud, lude and chardonnay–induced sex
In their room, my face alight in the gleam of corny, yet lewd innuendo.
Love, Gopher. Love, Freddie Baby. Love, exciting and new.
Be happy with that.