Did Moses wear a mask at all,
or Joshua or Job?
*
Or had they faith enough
to check each heathenish microbe?
*
Would Peter, James, and John agree
to veil their faces instantly
*
or would they be desirous
to exorcise the virus?
*
Today beliefs are vague
when it comes to the plague.
*
Perhaps the epilogue
to God's own Decalogue
*
Should now include the task
of keeping on your mask!
The CDC cannot decide
which way it wants to ever ride.
Like a bumptious child do they
first come close, then run away.
A diff'rent drummer is just fine;
but they have got to show some spine.
Should we wear a mask or not?
Indoors? Outdoors? Afterthought?
How about while having sex?
Or going to the Multiplex?
Give me concrete guidance please
(so I can claim conspiracies!)
The ominous summer season
is giving me a good reason
to stay in my bed
and cover my head
to avoid Nature's red treason.
"Reza Baluchi washed ashore on Saturday near St. Augustine, Fla., in a ‘‘hydro pod,” startling beachgoers with a homemade contraption that resembles a hamster wheel."
Edward Morton Stuzzlefield
invented fruit already peeled;
banana bunches he created
that of their skin had been castrated.
But the public did not feel
that his invention had appeal.
In poverty he did remain,
without so much as quiche lorraine.
*
But Edward could not be defeated;
he turned his thoughts to lands depleted.
Organic fertilizer, cheap,
came to him one night in sleep.
To Washington he traveled quick
with burlap sacks both strong and thick
to capture all the rich bs
that came straight from our own Congress.
He spread it on a test field bare
and clover grew like teenage hair.
But once again the public sank
his hopes, because the bs stank --
no farmer wanted Edward's mix;
they said it reeked of politics.
*
Now Stuzzlefield was in a bind;
on all his bills he fell behind.
Another brainstorm came at last,
and this one seemed quite unsurpassed!
In his garage he toiled away,
inventing hard both night and day.
And came up with a giant spoon
to catapult men to the Moon.
Put billionaires in outer space,
thought Ed, and I'll be Upper Case.
It had a giant spring and gear,
and Ed was first to volunteer.
He sprang into the stratosphere --
and ne'er was seen again, I fear.
*
His spirit, though, lives on in those
who want to challenge the cosmos;
those who dream and tinker when
the world is filled with lesser men
content to plod the daily rut
and think our hero was a nut.
To crackpot dreamers everywhere
I bow my head and wish you fair!
Give me a can of beans,
just any kind you please:
Kidney, Lima, red,
and especially black eye peas.
I eat 'em with eggs for breakfast.
Put 'em on toast for lunch.
Mash 'em with roasted peanuts
at dinner, for the crunch.
They're always on sale at the market;
forty-nine cents per can.
A pantry full of Goya,
and I'm feeling like a new man.
So what if they make me gassy?
So what if the foodies object?
I live by myself on fixed income;
don't need to be so circumspect!
As a foolish and scared
middle aged man
fleeing heavy fees
for a failed marriage
I washed up on the beach
in Ban Phe.
Sure, I was a coward;
most men are
when it comes to money.
Rather than face the music
I faced the brightness of wild
cloud wrack over
the Gulf of Thailand.
Taught a little English.
Ate a lot of shrimp fried rice
on banana leaves.
Knew a Thai woman my age
who drank her beer with ice in it.
She owned a black Toyota truck.
Imagined my kids
come to visit me
on my coconut plantation.
I rented a bungalow
with a yard full of soursop trees
and a fish pond;
the spirit house was next to
the privy.
Toyota truck woman
hung orchids everywhere --
ten baht apiece.
I felt whole on the surface;
underneath were my limestone caverns,
ready to collapse into sink holes
at the drop of a wide brimmed hat --
which you needed in that climate.
When my dreams began to fill with snow
I let my passport lapse
and borrowed money to go back.
Come back to canned mangoes.
Crumpled hundred baht notes
I mailed to my kids --
the letters were returned
'Address Unknown.'
And tall stringy bamboo plants
in the waiting rooms of government
agencies,
waiting for them to take away . . .
well, everything.
But I eventually found out
when they take away everything
from you
you grow new shoots
like the bamboo.
Although you're still
hollow
inside.
********************
Theodore Freedman, of Camden NJ, analyzed the above poem thus:
"That was your best work my old friend. Your best work because I heard how honest and real this time was for you and how you were filled up and empty at the same time. The Buddhists would aver that the empty space in you is the good part, the useful part. A coffee cup is only useful because of the empty space inside."
The truth is out of vogue, it seems.
With factories producing streams
of falsehoods for a tidy sum,
and workers stir the vilest scum
to mold opinions that will cause
humanity to show its claws.
No one knows the final price
of this booming cyber-vice.
Men have eyes for only wealth,
and so they work in techno-stealth
to rain deceit upon the globe
like acid precip's deadly robe.
Yet truth cannot be hid for long;
it sings an everlasting song
that rises over all the smut
of discord and foul scuttlebutt.
And those who deal in wholesale lies
will find they've won a tinsel prize.
Meanwhile guard the light within
and laugh at all the foolish din!
Joseph Mercola, an osteopath,
doesn't know bupkis but he can do math.
Misinformation is his stock in trade;
he's pulling in money with his masquerade.
Facebook and Twitter have posted his trash
and viewers seem willing to give him their cash.
No vaccination! he endlessly posts.
They're unnecessary, he constantly boasts.
Eat plenty of yogurt, and mattresses shun,
and this, he does claim, is how health will be won.
A quack with some letters right after his name
is often believed by the mentally lame;
they lap up his products at prices immense
and show all the world how they lack common sense.
How sad that a market will always exist
for mountebank promises that turn to mist!
If I were a trout in Montana
I would not be shouting hosanna.
The streams are too low
and warming up so
I'd feel like a rotten banana.
The Olympic Stadium shows
Mr. and Mrs. Rows;
an old circus term
that made troupers squirm --
meaning the bank would foreclose.
