by Rick Young | Mar 23, 2020 | Poem
My thinking cap’s been on a nap,
or else I think of dying.
I get up like a normal chap,
then back to bed go, sighing.
I really hate to watch the news,
though nothing else is on.
Most every day I’ve got the blues,
and now I can’t blame Don.
It’s come to where my mind goes bare
and hunts conspiracy,
like it’s a vapor released where
those live who disagree.
We need statistics on the trends
on who gets sick and who stays well.
If those untouched are his friends,
then we’re inside a living hell.
Could this be a plot
to simply cancel all elections?
Let the liberals rot
while offering his friends protections?
Could it be he’d kill the world
consolidating power?
And maybe his pal Vlad unfurled
this deadly dream so dour.
It could be they’ll rule the ravaged earth
from west to east.
Perhaps they were destined from their birth.
Marks of the Beast.
by Rick Young | Mar 21, 2020 | Poem
Drop out, Bernie. It’s too late.
Get some social distance.
Your ideas have to wait.
Build up your resistance.
If the world survives this test,
you might run again.
So your platform was the best,
but you couldn’t win.
If you run at eighty-three,
they’ll call you insane,
the only candidate around
who recalls The Maine.
Your young base will keep their pace,
perhaps repair our schism.
In four years our saving grace
might be socialism.
Free school for the living,
health care for the masses.
Government that’s warm and giving,
not like present asses.
Quarantine and watch the scene
as Trump and Biden battle.
Pray that gods will intervene
and we won’t die like cattle.
In four years, we’ll know the score.
You’ll survive to change the core.
Live so life goes on once more.
Vote for Bernie, twenty-four.
by Rick Young | Mar 20, 2020 | Story
Just when you thought this pandemic was too much to hack,
the latest news to hackle blues is “Bill O’Reilly’s Back !”
On the internet, he’s pimping some stock guru’s scam.
Grab the wealth and fuck mass health is part of this flim flam.
Send in all your money and you’ll even get Bill’s book,
the one about his white house chum. A crook writes of a crook.
And in the package deal you’ll get the blueprint to great wealth.
I’d save your bucks from these sick fucks and put them toward your health.
by Rick Young | Mar 19, 2020 | Poem
Steve Minnowchin is gonna throw some money in,
so you can origami while sequestered.
A thousand paper cranes will not relieve the pains.
Though it might help with boredom that has festered.
For now it’s just green paper, there’s nothing left to buy.
You might as well use it as toiletry.
You could make a funky money suit like David Byrne’s,
so mourners can think, “Funny man, was he.”
Maybe you can pay off roving gangs looking for food,
or buy a gun from someone in an alley.
You can smoke a dollar bill when you get in the mood,
relax and sing the love theme from “Death Valley.”
You can paper bathroom walls with twenty dollar bills
or lounge inside a bathtub full of dimes.
Money coming through the mail may cure a couple ills,
but, ultimately, it will lead to crimes.
Where we gonna go, with our big bucks in tow?
The shelves are empty in most every store.
Maybe you can buy hooch from a dealer in skid row
and lay out drunk for three weeks on your floor.
So, thank you, Steve Minnowchin, for your ultimate concern,
but your stimulus is less than stimulating.
We’re watching out our windows for the whole damn town to burn,
while our mailboxes sit, mouths open, waiting.
by Rick Young | Mar 18, 2020 | Poetry
O what has become of the Truffula trees
that swayed in the cool summer breeze?
The Lorax has fled, the Once-ler is dead,
because of a deadly disease.
In the Grickle grass there lay the Brown Bar-ba-loots,
not a sound of their hoots, they were dead-ass galoots.
Because of new laws, they’d no Truffula fruits,
and now decomposed in their furry red boots.
No Humming-Fish hummed in the scummed-over pond.
No spell would revive them, no magical wand.
Some said all would change if the Lorax came back.
But that dude is hiding, he can’t save you, Jack.
The trees have been felled and the birds are no more.
Not even the poor Swomee-Swans know the score.
If only they’d listened and stayed more inside,
with great social distance, they might not have died.
The Lorax had warned us. He spoke for the trees.
And now we are all mostly dead from disease.
So, kids, mind your parents and stay out of school.
It’s better to still be alive and a fool.
When earth has subsumed all your technologies,
may the cool summer breeze rustle Truffula trees.
