by Rick Young | Sep 24, 2021 | Poem
My heart is scarred.
I’ve been disbarred
from life’s most supreme court.
I hope to squeeze some living in
despite time being short.
A car needs a new battery.
Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with me.
It’s not like I’ve become unwired.
Just spend more time being tired.
Hard to get a rhythm thumping
when the heart is hardly pumping.
There’s no dancing in the street
when the blood can’t keep the beat.
No use pondering my faults.
Just slow things down to a waltz.
by Rick Young | Sep 21, 2021 | Poem
Ghost forests on the coast
and penguins killed by bees.
Looks as though this climate roast
will have us on our knees.
Hurricane debris piles up
and leaves an awful stench.
We’re bailing with a paper cup.
We need a bigger bench.
Antarctica’s large ozone hole
is bigger than the land.
The climate task needs trumpeting.
We need a bigger band.
by Rick Young | Sep 16, 2021 | Poem
Let’s bring the wooly mammoth back to life.
It’s time we start to practice ‘de-extinction.’
Genetically reengineered elephants
would save the tundra. That is their distinction.
The herds would roam the Arctic
with its melting permafrost,
knocking down sun-stealing trees
where grassland has been lost.
The light-reflecting tundra
locks in carbon and methane.
Some bioethicists have called the idea insane.
But, what the hell, we’re splicing cows,
pigs, vegetables and fruit.
If woolies could stop climate change,
genetics becomes moot.
by Rick Young | Sep 14, 2021 | Poem
The Lone Ranger did not age too well,
grew old living in a masked-man’s hell.
But, way before the cowboy hat,
he was a circus acrobat.
He modeled and did Air Force time,
then came the role that proved divine.
Young Jack Moore, name changed to Clayton,
got the break he’d been awaitin’.
First western made for t.v.
became a hit on ABC.
Silver horse and Silverheels
suddenly were great big deals.
He did five seasons of “Hi Ho,”
and then was told he had to go.
He would tour venues, always masked,
and did not cease when he was asked.
He was Lone Ranger to the masses,
cowboy duds and dark sunglasses.
Embroiled in a five-year suit,
fought hard once he got the boot.
And, finally, there was his name
on Hollywood’s great Walk of Fame.
He had four wives, but now he’s gone,
his ranch is found in Forest Lawn.
by Rick Young | Sep 11, 2021 | Poem
The junta of General Augusto Pinochet
took control in a Chilean coup on this day,
deposing President Salvadore Allende,
whose own democracy was seen as in their way.
Some said this had the smell of CIA,
Dick Nixon, with his penchant for foul play,
was much opposed to any Marxist sway,
and friends of Cuba always had to pay.
It’s now been forty-eight years since the coup.
Allende wound up dead. They don’t know who.
Chile had gone democratic back in thirty-two.
Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Peru
in the sixties watched as military overthrew
elected governments as if they were a strain of flu.
Perhaps it was inevitable Chile would fall, too.
Keep this in mind as things unwind inside the U.S. zoo.
