Kenny Boy

deadline poet

By Calvin Trillin

This article appeared in the March 4, 2002 edition of The Nation.

February 14, 2002

(A Houston version of the Irish folk song)

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Oh, Kenny Boy, your friends are disappearing.
They don't know you, much less your kvetchy wife.
Yes, it's sad when pols that you've been shmeering
Now hope that you'll get twenty years to life.
They sang your song: They passed deregulation.
They passed your laws. They bent the regs your way.
But now they track your every obfuscation.
Old Kenny Boy, their Kenny Boy's now Mr. Lay.

About Calvin Trillin

Calvin Trillin is The Nation's "deadline poet." He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1963 and has written the syndicated weekly column "Uncivil Liberties" since 1986. He has authored many, many books, including Tepper's Not Going Out and Deadline Poet: My Life as a Doggerelist. more...
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