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.

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.

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.

and the dying crying out along the road.

Some near-dead jump aboard, they want to see the lord,

without the strength to handle their big load.

All roads lead to the sea, a quarantined country;

we’re trapped within the land where we were born.

No Germans, now, but germs, completely different terms,

and now we are defeated and forlorn.

One day in time there will be a revival,

a new race who somehow mastered survival.

Some hid in airless tombs or found some sterile rooms.

Perhaps there was a commune way up north.

The old world’s gone away, swept out by viral blooms.

And from the cave the new world ventures forth.

declared by King Fuckwad.

But the virus doesn’t care.

It can’t be killed by god.

While we’re on our knees,

praying to a vapor,

and trying not to sneeze,

we still need toilet paper.

And as we ask for spirit help

to keep us from the dead,

we’d be better off on Yelp,

looking to buy bread.

Pray to Yahwe. Pray to Christ.

Beg the Lord of Karma.

Pray a vaccine is low-priced

by the gods of pharma.

Pray for rapture. Pray for rain.

Keep your social distance.

Pray that you don’t die in pain.

At the king’s insistence.

All your praying may distract

from just who is at fault,

King Fuckwad, who was slow to act,

sealed in his germ-free vault.

Pray, pray, he’ll say, from your t.v.,

the lord will surely listen.

But in our sick reality,

it’s certain god is missin’.

The bear just ate the market as part one of a forthcoming compensation.

The virus is like Bernie Sanders, taking down the richest of the rich.

Oh my god, look at this week’s Dow Jones and tell me we’re not in a ditch.

They’ve tossed their sense and sane aside to coast on this swamp’s waterslide.

And now when the tsunami hits, they’re playing with their nasty bits.

The king of vague insults the plague and all the foreign elements who sowed it.

Two weeks ago, it was a hoax and weaker than the flu. He said he knowed it.

And now, caught with his pants down, he is spinning webs of dross in monotone.

He’s empty and he’s evil and he’s now out on dark death’s limb all alone.