Drumph Among the Poets: Atlantic City

DRUMPH AMONG THE POETS: ATLANTIC CITY

In Xanadu did Kubla Drumph

As told by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Drumph

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where CASH, the sacred river, ran

Through contracts measureless to man

Down to a boardwalk sea.

So many blocks of blighted ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And there were cash bars bright with sinuous frills,

Where blossomed many a promoter’s fee;

And here were entertainments ancient as the hills,

Exchanged for fattedwads of greenery.

But oh! That deep pink marble chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a leafy IRS!

A savage place! Asholy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning cash flow was haunted

By accountants wailing for the bailout demon-lawyer!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if the creditors in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty debt load momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge law suits vaulted like rebounding hail,

With small suppliers beneath the thresher’s flail:

And mid these roiling suits at once and ever

It flung up CASH the sacred river.

Five hundred lawyers meandering with a mazy motion

Through unpaid workersthe sacred flow ran,

Then reached the bankruptcy courts measureless to man,

And sank to a lifeless ocean;

And mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Chris Christie prophesying war!

While the shadow of Atlantic City’s dome of pleasure

Floated downward on a wave;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the bankers about to cave.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A bailout with all small creditorson the ice!

A groped damsel with a failed complaint

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Americano maid

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Lago del Mar

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ’twould win me,

That with Donald loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! Those caves of fake!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his pomaded hair!

Weave a restraint around him thrice,

And ope your eyes with holy dread

For he hath fed on power and egotism,

And drunk the milk of Populism.

Thersites