Trading verses with MAGA poet laureate Peter Ticktin | Pat Beall - Sun Sentinel

Getting your

Trinity Audioplayer ready...You might think there’s no more room on Peter Ticktin’s crowded resume beyond Trump military-school chum, co-counsel on Trump’s pouty lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, pardon seeker for an election denier and now, newly outed author of the draft presidential order that urges Trump to just sign on the dotted line, declare a national emergency and dump the midterms already.

To which I would reply: Don’t forget poet!

Ticktin also rhymes.

I read the Deerfield Beach attorney’s poetry on his law office website and have been spiraling downward into verse ever since, trying to marry his preferred means of communication with his role in fighting to keep Big Blue votes from being counted. And my friends? It is contagious.

Mr. Ticktin likes votes not one bit

His joy would be Trump throwing a fit

that could take away counting.

Instead Trump’s out there

mounting

a party, some war

or cheap glitz.

I freely admit I lack the wordsmithing to equal his description of, say, a chopped up Miss Playboy: “Cut apart by some contraption / As she longed for loving action.”

It’s about a jigsaw puzzle! Ticktin explained to a relieved reporter.

So was Donald Trump’s 2016-election-conspiracy-inside-of-an-election-conspiracy civil suit. It named 50-ish evildoers, from Hillary Clinton to a rando guy named Charles. To protect his anonymity, we will call him Chuck.

How did Ticktin and the rest of Trump’s legal team fare in this case?

They did not read the dates

They did not write the pleas

They messed it up complete

They shot their own two feet.

And also Chuck’s.

The mildly enraged judge who had to wade through this Russian-nesting-doll hulk of a suit ended up suggesting that defendants on the receiving end, and most especially Rando Chuck, might consider contacting their friendly neighborhood Bar association about Trump’s attorneys.

If we still lived on a planet capable of sustaining intelligent life, that would have sent Ticktin to the Poet’s Corner for a very long time.

But like Pluto, that planet has spun away into fond memory.

Not Ticktin, though. According to ABC News, he is chatting up his proposed anti-voting executive order to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and former overstock CEO Patrick Byrne.

Can a home furnishing-cabal haiku be far behind?

Lazy Boys rise, Lazy Boys fall,

Somewhere, an Ikea sofa softly sneezes.

Billy Bookcases vote Democrat.

I know I should be taking the increasingly obvious scheme to topple democracy as we know it more seriously. But as Ticktin’s verse reminded me, bad poets gotta poet. Or maybe that was Vanilla Ice.

Are not random acts of rhyming gone wrong still more pleasant than thinking about squealing war-babies, the wrecking ball that is the last week of a Florida legislative session or the AI Apocalypse which should be here (checks watch) very soon?

Far happier to versify about Ticktin securing a Trump pardon for Tina Peters, now serving nine years for breaking into voting machines, who police say kicked at them as they attempted to seize her iPad:

Pardon my Tina, pled her Ticktin,

A kick at a cop in a bagel shop?

A kneejerk reaction to getting popped!

Pray release her sin of shin.

More, pleasant, too, than dwelling on the nation’s top election deniers who met last week with Trump officials to swap recipes for revolutions:

The chief defect of Cleta Mitchell

Is scheming much and proving little.

Oh, the big bad world is full of big bad words, and I am sorry to have added to this week’s pile. But in my defense, none of my iambic petameter gone wild, not even the part where I ripped off Belloc, argues for keeping people from voting because they’re not my kind of people.

For that, the world needs the sly-word twisties of Ticktin.

Except, of course, it doesn’t.

What the world needs is a little more good poetry and a lot more voting.

Pat Beall is a Sun Sentinel columnist and editorial writer. Contact her at [email protected].