by Rick Young | Mar 28, 2020 | Poem
Doggerel sages earn no wages,
no health benefits.
Maybe fill three hundred pages.
All the news that shits.
We are like the olde town criers,
rhyming in the night.
He would say we all are liars.
Fake news, just not right.
But someone has to sing the song
of our great country’s fall.
It’s a dirge, which does seem wrong,
called “Up against the wall.”
We climbed this hill, then took that pill,
then all went psychedelic.
The one percent went for the kill.
Our world became a relic.
Oh yes, there’s still folks on the street.
Some cough. Some wear a mask.
It’s not the sound of happy feet.
What’s wrong? Don’t even ask.
The dead are swept away in trucks,
some headed to mass graves.
We, to a man, agree this sucks.
We don’t think Jesus saves.
And as the air grows quiet,
thick with viral deadly spores,
the mass, too sick to riot,
waits for their end, locked indoors.
by Rick Young | Mar 27, 2020 | Poem
Two years ago today, my mother died.
I’m glad she did not have to see this end.
When her mind fled somewhere deep inside,
she still thought the world was her best friend.
She remembered talking to the birds,
planting flowers, dancing in the night.
For this life, I don’t think she’d find words.
She’d prefer old memories to fright.
When she told me how she was forgetting,
happy to let some things slip away,
she explained it as some kind of vetting,
making room for things beyond today.
Just to watch the robins from her small room,
building nests inside her only tree,
she had not a notion of doom or gloom.
Looking back, that’s quite all right with me.
by Rick Young | Mar 26, 2020 | Poem
Trump’s fireside chats
are driving me bats.
A lumbering leech eyeing docs.
He’s probably wearing red underwear
and black with a toe hole silk socks.
He nods and he squints like the inkling he had
is rapidly trickling away.
He knows in a minute he could look real bad,
unless he finds something to say.
His handlers creep up behind him.
His blood pressure’s right off the charts.
They might have to tether or bind him,
or subdue with medical darts.
Before he goes off on a blue bunny rant
or swears love to evil portenders,
they’ll give him a jolt that assures that he cant.
And now for a word from our vendors.
by Rick Young | Mar 25, 2020 | Song
Been drivin’ all night with a thorn in my side.
Been drivin’ all night with a thorn in my side.
Looked over at the passenger side
and Jesus had died.
What would we do now, I got him too drunk at the dance.
Tried to get him to waltz but he hovered ‘bove the ground in a trance.
The only time that it was fine was when the rowdy fellows yelled for wine.
And then the place was flooded with Merlot as if by happenstance.
I told him I was blitzed at ten, he said, “I’m crucified.”
The bouncer said an hour later he’d looked like he’d died.
“Here, put him on this cross and we can move him through the back outside.”
Now out here in the desert, I’m just hangin’ him like a kite.
Now out here in the desert, I’m just hangin’ him like a kite.
It sure’ll dry him out
but it just does not seem right.
by Rick Young | Mar 24, 2020 | Obit
In three weeks, we can work while we are sick.
Or so says mister bungle, our head prick.
Don’t worry ’bout the spread,
we don’t want business dead.
So let it kill the weak, like Mitt or Mick.
You’ll walk into a store that’s full of germs.
No coughing while inside. Those are the terms.
Your hairdresser, say, may look three shades of gray,
and croak, “we’ve got a special now on perms.”
Or maybe you need certain kinds of juices.
You jump onto a tram filled with papooses.
Then go in to a shop that’s filled with COVID pop,
and decorated, ceiling down, with nooses.
Oh look, the market’s surging back ahead.
They’re bidding on the bodies of the dead.
Before a carcass swells, they make quite fine hotels,
not fancy, just a bodybag-like bed.
And, back on top are gasoline and oil.
It’s best to burn a corpse and not to boil.
The theatre is back on, but don’t go to the john.
Afraid what’s in there might the third act spoil.
‘Normal’ life will brim with the excitement.
Down the road there will be an indictment.
We knew we should have hidden,
but did as we were bidden.
A barren planet was his mad entitlement.
