Poetry Slam

[captainsblog]

Here's a short one I wrote after driving home from Wegmans and other errands yesterday, and seeing more walkers out and about than usual:

They're everywhere.
The silent solitary walkers.
Occasionally seen in pairs.
Ambling straight ahead.
Dead serious looks on their faces.
Eventually they all will pair off, and the pairs into quartets.
And so on and so on and so on.
They will infect each other.
And before long, their silence will be broken by a single word.

BRRRRRAINNNNNNNNSSSSSSS!

Some are accompanied by a wild animal.
Or perhaps several wild animals.

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I also realized I never posted the actual poem wot I wrote and read at the Last Open Mic before all this. Well, written at the one two weeks before it in February, when news had come down about the star of the piece.  Then, the day of the last open mic on March 11, additional news followed.  That inspired me to change the name of the poem to "23 and Me" on the spot and make it my Poetry at Perks debut:

If you'd always been an asshole, I’d have hated you less.
But you had to create cool when all there was here was cold and dying.

When I got here, there was little good.
There was UB.
I came for it, just like you did a decade earlier.

But Chippewa was a red light district.
Theaters and cinemas, being wrecked by the outsized balls of urban planners who needed those sacred spaces for parking lots and urban malls.

Still, you saw something here.
You restored where others destroyed.
You brought music that moved me-to a crumbling downtown cinema and a suburban Stage 1 where 30000 people say they saw U2 open for Talas.
You gave me Who, you gave me Clash, all from Central Ticket Outlet, 210 Delaware.  

No trace of it anymore.  Or of you here, either since after I left and before I came back.

Because you got too big even for us.
You went from music to film,
And for 30 years you brought talent and insights and Ismail and Kevin to a Hollywood too full of shit.
You got a British dame to confess she had your initials tattooed on her ass.

Did you have to grab them by the p?
Did you have to ruin 40 years of good in my life for the sake of your own dick?
Did you have to make yourself dead to me the way Cosbeee, and Woodeee, and Spaceeee, and Polanskeeeee did before you?
You don’t even rhyme with them! 
Oh wait. You DO:
Harveeeeee!

And when your privilege finally failed you, and you got caught and arrested and indicted and tried and convicted? You hid behind a walker to evoke Piteeee.
Until they nailed your ass and jailed your ass, and then all of a sudden, MEIN FUHRER I CAN WALK!

It came back out in court today- when the judge gave you
23.
Fucking.
Not enough.
Years.

Walk to your shame.
Walk to your doom.
Just keep walking.
We see you for what you are, not what you were.
We still have what you were, the Who and Clash and Ismail and Kevin and a dame without your name on her ass.

It was never there.

And now, neither are you.

In the weeks since then, Weinstein has suffered even more indignity than his 23 year sentence. He's tested positive for the virus, and, perhaps worst of all, he's been transferred to a state prison near here.

The horror.

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Finally, one more of sorts. From the Helen Steiner Ray collection: this one found its genesis in the assorted reports of holy men being flaming assholes.  This Florida Man Reverend, finally arrested after continuing to hold megachurch services despite stay-in-place orders.  This one from North Carolina, perishing from the virus after claiming it was all "mass hysteria" intended to hurt our godly President. And closest to family, Jerry Falwell Junior has insisted that his Big Daddy University in Lynchburg welcome back its students and compelled the return of its faculty, which now has numerous confirmed cases and retaliations against anyone questioning the Reverend's divine wisdom.

So out of all that, I’ve settled on my side hustle for the duration of the plague: sending out sympathy cards for Fundies and politicians who contract COVID after claiming it was a hoax:

Keep the faith, good and trusted servant.

And give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.

Remember the words of our Lord Jesus:

Many are called, but few are chosen.

And in all things, even facing death, praise the Lord!

(When you see it,...)

Emily has promised to send one up to campus for Jerruh, along with a nice bouquet from a local florist, for his hospital bed if he winds up catching it. Or his bier. Whichever works.

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I've got more updates and observations, but I'm going to save them in hopes of being inspired to post here more often.  First day of Work Entirely From Home went okay, so nothing majorly new, but y'all come back now from a safe distance, hear?