by Rick Young | Mar 31, 2020 | Poem
Death toll now tops nine-eleven.
Settin’ up spare cots in heaven.
Good thing Trump kept numbers down.
He should wear a golden crown.
Maybe a red cape velour,
on each arm a gorgeous whore.
On a pulpit made of gold.
He’s not fat. He’s not old.
Lies ! Lies ! Rolling in.
Fake news is the eighth damn sin.
Pay no heed to what he’ll shout.
Networks parse the whole truth out.
All his extras are on script,
reality stretched and chipped.
Only Fauci can be trusted.
Afraid someday he’ll be dusted,
Doctor Phil put in his place,
someone with a t.v. face.
Only pundits on the right
can be trusted in this fight.
Please don’t listen to the libs.
They will only tell you fibs.
His words are the only truth
in our isolation booth.
Trust your leader. Trust your king.
Only he can stop this thing.
And if we’re on the road to hell ,
he’ll ensure you that is swell.
Millions could die, I suppose.
No skin off his orange nose.
by Rick Young | Mar 30, 2020 | Poem
Trump’s Easter ‘aspiration’ caused lots of consternation.
Now ‘good things’ should be happening by June.
We’ll see ‘the bottom of the hill,” for real or by the force of will.
A hundred thousand will have died too soon.
We now lead the whole world with our high number of infections,
overtaking Spain and the Chinese.
He’s got to clear this up before the upcoming elections,
or else he’ll have to hand Biden the keys.
Twenty-twenty hindsight will not be kind to the world,
the year when we were all sent to our room.
COVID-19 had us in its deadly fingers curled.
We had to read about the gloom and doom.
And as the market crashed and people lashed out at their leaders,
Trump said he played it as a perfect ten.
With his sub-standard team of con men, crooks and bottom-feeders,
he led us through the viral lion’s den.
For all his hoary pomp and and in-your-damned-face lying,
his base remains, amazingly, intact.
He’ll use this as a power point, how he curtailed the dying,
no need for numbers, history or fact.
by Rick Young | Mar 29, 2020 | Obit
“Sarkafo” Gus was not a social distancing believer.
He’d prowl the street quite indiscreet, a ciggie butt retriever.
He’d kiss a baby, kiss a dog, if any were around.
He’d pick up pennies, anything that’s shiny, off the ground.
Cops would yell, “Hey! Dumb as hell! Get yourself back inside!”
He’d make like he had a home and find some place to hide.
For a week he’d roamed the road with nothing much to show.
An iron pipe, a can of tripe, a button-shaped rainbow.
His dream was that he owned the world, the last man left behind.
The rain came hard. The wind blew cold. The season was not kind.
So, when the radio call came, a dead man in the gutter,
the police knew that it must be Gus, the roving hobo nutter.
Four men in plastic suits arrived and threw him in a truck.
No obit, funeral, even prayers. Seemed no one gave a fuck.
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.
