The Emperor Has No Balls, by Lindsey Thäden
Urgent and Timely Responses urges writers to engage with the news that directly affects their lives as artists and as human beings. If you would like to submit a response, please see our call for submissions here.
The Emperor Has No Balls
After INDECLINE’s multicity
American art installation featuring a naked
Donald Trump
August 2016
written in collaboration with
allen ginsberg &
karl marx
the little old man destroyed
by madness : his face is a grimace
of sorrow & gloom
starving
hysterical naked
madhouse : trumping tower
trumping fame
trumping power
yacketa yakhe’s
[screaming, vomiting] facts :
cock & endless balls
anecdotes : promises
budgets : borders
as they break & fall
as they break & fall.
Union Square, NY—Bulbous, veiny
birthday boy slaps mystified, giggly, selfie-
snapping crowds at impromptu strip sess
Cold of heart, cold of mind dragging
the negro streets
a lost
battalion of sardonic
conversationalists
who threw down a wall
who threw down terrorism
(eating) fire & jump(ing) in limousines
out of Gingrich’s moon.
the little old man
talked continuously
seventy hours from park to pad to bar to
Bellevue to museum to Brooklyn Bridge
rushing, rushing
looking for his anger fix.
: : : : : :
they seem to feel no pain at all
jumping down stoops off fire escapes
the waves swirling
white supreme as whip cream
no muslims no mexicans
shut down these huddled masses
yearning to break free
Visions! omens! hallucinations!
harlequin speech of
cock & endless balls!
gone down the American river
shuddering! mouth-wracked &
battered bleak of brain all drained of
brilliance in the drear light of ashcan
rantings and kind king light of mind.
Lindsey Thäden is the most recent winner of New York City's 2016 Poetweet contest, with her twitter poem on China Town. Thaden is a poet who happens to be a Doctorate of Nursing Practice Candidate at South Dakota State University; she views her medical career as literary research. Thaden is fluent in Spanish, and speaks some Japanese and French as well. Thaden's poetry has been featured in the New York Post, the TCU Daily Skiff, and eleven40seven. Her Japanese inspired artwork has been featured in the Harvard Summer Review.
