DOGGEREL: The Ballad of Bobby and Joe



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1.

There was a man named Bobby
He was named after a Byrd.
Born up a tree-filled holler,
his life could have been absurd.

For he dallied with the Klan,
as a young man on the move.
Apologized for decades as
he found another groove.

He got himself elected
to the Senate’s marble halls.
And in his final decade,
Spoke truth with lots of balls.

When last he left this Earth
He was lauded like a king.
By three presidents and mighty folk,
For he’d become a thing.


West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin; President Obama, Vice President Biden and former President Bill Clinton attend a memorial service for Robert C. Byrd July 2, 2010 at the State capitol in Charleston WV. | SOURCE: CBS News

He returned a bunch of billions
to a state that had been mobbed.
By barons and by oligarchs, who
plundered and who robbed.

Everywhere you go now, you
see things named for this Byrd.
He’s a West Virginia genus,
Bobby’s no longer absurd.


2.


Bobby’s crucial office
got filled up with this guy,
named Joe with family ties to
coal fumes that fills the sky.

Joe fancies he’s a bridge between
the Dems and the Repubs.
Though he only seems to really hear
what’s said in private clubs.

Joe turns out to be, right now,
the guy who stops all bills,
to bring more billions back to West Virginia
and its rolling hills.

And maybe there’s a Byrd somewhere
who’s spinning in its grave,
as Joe keeps sucker-punching bills
the world needs to be saved.

Now, across the planet
headlines all share the word,
this guy Joe in West Virginia
has really grown absurd.

The thousand things named Byrd
that dot the Mountain State,
are likely not the end result
for this guy Joe’s own fate.


~ By Douglas John Imbrogno | nov4.2021

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