Poem a Day December #8

Sorry to have failed you yesterday, my life of leisure having been too much to overcome. Actually, it was more the making sure my 10 year-old had completed his homeschooling for the day and had eaten something more than just crackers and toffee, coupled with Thursday night football on a Tuesday...(another sign we’re living in the end times).

At any rate, I regret that the muses were left to their own devices for an entire day, and I do worry that they will eventually give up on this old poet and find refuge in some new poet with more talent (or maybe less talent, but more likelihood of utilizing it). So, I’m back at it today in between Uber rides, today’s poem being patched together between pick ups and drop offs.

It stems from this word “authenticity,“ which Billy and Jeffrey Brown discuss at the 2:00 minute mark of this video.

The First Asian American President of the United States

Jimmy Wong was born

of a Chinese dissident father

and Vietnamese mother,

and he was a real inspiration

to Asian Americans of all ethnicities,

having made his fortune

with a wildly successful

chain of “Chinamese” restaurants

called the Pho King Wok.

Jimmy had grown tired of the typically

racist American electorate, so he divorced

his Japanese wife and married

his high school sweetheart, Bonnie,

a blonde-haired, blue-eyed

All-American volleyball player from Malibu.

They had two small, curly-haired daughters

and a boy on the way when he hired

his crack team of advisors

who suggested he embrace the stereotypes.

So he campaigned around the country

in his 1980 Cadillac Seville

with its red and gold paint job

and 24 karat, wire rims

handing out fortune cookies

with fortunes that read:

Pho King vote!

And his partner in the restaurant business,

The Coca-Cola Company,

sponsored his campaign

and gave him his official slogan,

“Refresh the World. Make a Difference.”

He won his first term by a narrow margin,

eking out a victory in Florida and winning

Pennsylvania by the slightest of margins.

But he won a second term by a landslide

and, although he had lobbied for a change

to the Official Seal of the President

from the two-taloned eagle

to the more innocuous

waving Lucky Cat,

and had taken to pardoning

the Thanksgiving duck,

leaving all the American turkeys

to fend for themselves,

he was widely revered

as the most authentically

American president in recent memory.