In Competition No. 2984 you were invited to follow in the footsteps of Green Day and Moby and provide Donald Trump’s detractors with a protest song.
 
Where’s Woody Guthrie when you need him, you might ask. Well, as it turns out, the Dust Bowl Troubadour was well acquainted with the Trump family. Literary scholar Will Kaufman has discovered lyrics written by Guthrie excoriating his then landlord (‘Old Man Trump’) Fred Trump’s racist bigotry.
 
Billy Bragg has set the bar pretty high with his excellent reworking of that other folk icon Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’ ’ but Alan Millard’s Dylan-esque entry was well done too and earns him the bonus fiver. The rest take £30.
 

Come gather around, I’ve a sad tale to tell
Of a bigot and bully, the bigwig from Hell
With hair like a beaver’s tail plastered in gel
But he’s only a flash in the pan, man, only a flash in the pan.
 
He’s macho misogynist, coarse to the core,
A groper and grabber of pussies galore
Who claims it’s all locker room talk, nothing more,
But he’s only a flash in the pan, man, only a flash in the pan.
 
You Mexicans, Muslims and immigrants all,
He believes he can bar you by building a wall
And it won’t be like Jericho’s, destined to fall,
But he’s only a flash in the pan, man, only a flash in the pan.
 
He’s Putin’s prize puppet, a bolshie buffoon
With the farcical face of a comic cartoon
Who thinks he’s a guru yet acts like a goon,
But he’s only a flash in the pan, man, only a flash in the pan.
Alan Millard
 
We’ve seen your tower in NY
About as subtle as tsetse fly
And the lassies shout as you grope each thigh
Donald You’re A Loser [Chorus:]
 
When your words smell high, when your words sink low
Through the ranks of yes-men you will go
From the malls to the walls of Mexico
Donald You’re A Loser
 
With your waterboards and your slaughter eyes
And your private bankrupt enterprise
And the stretchy tissue of your lies
Donald You’re A Loser [Chorus:]
 
With your phoney facts and your tactless tweets
And your vacuum-packaged team of cheats
Each lad and lassie here repeats
Donald You’re A Loser [Chorus:].
Bill Greenwell
 
O Captain! My Captain! Mark well what you have done,
Convinced the people (and yourself) that you are It, The One.
There’s more to running government than ’Putin’ on the Ritz
And First Ladies should be diplomats behind the teeth’n’tits.
But all’s up, the die is cast,
The Lord of Misrule rules;
Down Pennsylvania Avenue
Now steams the Ship of Fools.
 
O Donald! Our Donald! You self-regarding chump —
We should have voted Homer Simpson, even Forrest Gump.
Whatever were we thinking, we must have lost the plot:
You claim to be a patriot? Walt Whitman you are not;
Rather, an orange-hair-job clown,
A pimped-up masquerade;
You’ve Trumped the world by trumpery,
The price will now be paid.
Mike Morrison
 
Pipelines. Pruitt. Hiring freeze. Keeping out the refugees.
Crowd size. Hand size. New press secretary’s lies.
Twitter tantrums. Funky hair. Bye bye, Mr Polar Bear.
Claims ignoring evidence. Conflicts with emoluments.
 
A-list folks who said No Way. Silencing the EPA.
Every ‘over-rated’ foe. Taxes that he’ll never show.
Jared Kushner. Twitter feuds. Rich, white nominated dudes.
Russian hacks that he’ll forgive. Facts that are alternative.
 
We didn’t vote for Donald.
No, we didn’t choose him; we see Putin use him.
We didn’t vote for Donald.
Even Clinton’s better, but we didn’t get her.
 
Staffers clap to fool the press. Muslim visa airport mess.
Torture’s now OK with us. State department exodus.
Briefings that he just ignores. Did I mention Twitter wars?
Merrick Garland, go get lost. Build the wall and damn the cost.
Max Gutmann (to the tune of ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’)
 
Hello Donald, our old friend,
You’re tweeting in the dark again,
Drafting diktats without thinking
Trashing taboos without blinking,
All rooted in your trademark semi-sleaze
So Donald please
We want the sound of silence
 
In restless tweets you walk alone
Making fake news of your own,
Giving everything a lethal twist
To be lapped up by your populists
Who adore your verbal shooting sprees
We’re on our knees
Give us the sound of silence
Paul Carpenter

No 2987: the art of loving

You are invited to supply a lesson in the art of seduction in the style of the author of your choice (up to 16 lines or 150 words). Email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 22 February.