And [his] time is a piece of wax
fallin’ on a termite —
who’s chokin’ on the splinters.
On Saturday, November 7th, 11:32 in the morning, all across the City pans began rapping, people clapping, cars shredded corners with bludgeoning horns, there was whoo-ing and yeow-ing, dance battles, brakes, the floors got the shakes, even crows started caw-ing, everyone who was sleeping was suddenly awake, and a man in the distance yelled this furious take: “Peace out, m*therf*cker, you faker, you fake!”
And that’s how the news spread he was gone. The election was called: His Royal Presidency lost. But we’ll always have the bad times, the memories he forced the City to make. Like when he stopped the Army’s Corps of Engineers from planning a sea wall in the harbor, saying we should have our “mops and buckets ready” when the next superstorm hits. Or when he refused to fund the Gateway Project, the plan for Penn Station to get a new Hudson River tunnel so the old one can be repaired. Or when he labeled New York an “anarchist city,” threatening to cut off $7 billion in federal funds. And now, today, something rare: When a coronavirus vaccine is ready to go, he announced, it would “be available to the entire general population, with the exception of places like New York State.” What?
Well, the City wouldn’t take his next black and blue keepsake. According to the Board of Elections, the decision was easy. The unofficial results say His Presidency received 586,900 presidential votes. Joe Biden, however, garnered 1,643,189. And although all the City’s absentee ballots haven’t been tallied yet, the numbers are clear. The mad king’s finished. The bully’s been bullied out. He’s un perdedor, baby. And he’s banished from here.
Lyrics from “Loser” by Beck, 1994.
Photo by Rick Stachura. A still from Roger Water’s Us + Them Tour at Barclays Center. September 12, 2017.