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.
by Rick Young | Mar 17, 2020 | Poem
What I see in my head is a mule train for the dead
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.
by Rick Young | Mar 16, 2020 | Obit
Now we all shall die in homes entombed.
While lawns at Mar-a-Lago are still groomed.
Ivanka makes designer purses,
unavailable to nurses.
Those who’d save us do so at their risk.
This is even worse than stop-and-frisk.
Three weeks we should stay inside,
getting news of those who’ve died.
This is truly genuine March madness.
Only betting numbers are on sadness.
No more movies, sports or closing nights.
Older folks in toilet paper fights.
Families getting last gas fills,
ready to head to the hills.
Running market aisles like ferrets,
scrambling for lettuce, carrots.
Only parties are on Skype.
They would seem a desperate type.
In this home, the cats are kings.
They’ll eat us when we get wings.
