POEM: NEWS OF THE WORLD #12

Is Trump a chump, mad as a hatter?

Why should we care? What does he matter?

He’s not the first, and he’s far from last

to play fiddle while it all goes past.

Sugar daddies tend to make us blue.

Along with moguls, they’re quite a crew.

In their deepest, darkest make-up sex,

They sign their love with a goodbye text.

Reports from the trenches make it clear:

Flowers and chocolates will cost us, Dear.

Our zygote wars will show what we need,

That fewer—really—need plant their seed.

More civil wars? We’ll choose Facebook “Like.”👍

But jellied babies and blown-up tykes? 👎

They're for the death squads who choose which dawn,

Which beating heart and whose final yawn.

LAST WAR WAS LIT BY A SINGLE SPARK!

Who would have dreamed our end such a lark?

“I thought that the ON button was OFF!”

(Reading instructions was just for toffs.)

Missiles are launched for fun and profit.

Smart bombs are dropped (a little off it).

Teabagged-cities soon choke on debris.

And yes, we move closer to that sea.

By crowns we’d pound; they all came around.

Like whales we’d sound—“We’re risen! We’re found!”

It was so clear; we had found our way,

Though on a path of a dimmer day.

DEMOCRACY’S IN  OUR DNA!

Yeah. Let’s rah! rah! rah! and hey! hey! hey!

We've clambered down our family tree,

To end up standing on bended knee.

So tug your forelock and tote that bale;

these colourful skins go off to jail.

If rainbows will bide in many hues,

Is the sky made more of by its blue?

People blow though here like tumble-weeds.

Some say it’s the wind that reaps past deeds.

I say it’s when roots first went their way—

They'll stop at nothing, unless they stay.

Warm winds will blow, but why should they, though?

They're ready to reap all that we sow.

Birds of a feather fall together.

Is there time for more man-made weather?

ESCAPED ICEBERG CALVES CORRALLED AT SEA!*

Let's say it's best, but I hope we’re free

To roll our old bones. (Oh, those will ache!)

Keep on dancing the “Atomic Shake!”

There’s trips to China but pain in Spain.
And nasty things crawl right up our drain:

Like “Bombs away!” Thanks, Enola Gay,

While your baby nukes whine all the day.

………..

We've had a great run with lots of fun.

We played in the sun, our work half-done.

But glaciers still melt, those salt seas rise,

No matter who'll live or who will die.

It's true that we’ve learned so very much

About this and that, and such and such.

Yet still we need discounts, refunds, breaks.

We've killed all our gods! (Both real and fake).

Zygote Wars

I DIDN'T WANT TO PUT IN ANOTHER NoW POEM, but I edited this a bit and added a couple of new stanzas. It’s not too bad. I like some imagery: about the real world of death squads versus the not real at all world of social media (which will only get worse before it goes away altogether.) In the “zygote wars” stanza, I had been reading Meet Me At Infinity, a collection of fiction and non-fiction by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon) where she writes about her experiences writing SiFi in a “man’s world”, and gave anecdotes about her life and travels.
I was also inspired by the short story, “Finding Flotsam”, by Bill Blondeau  that I reviewed earlier (see blog post 8/26/18). In “Flotsam”, Bill envisions a distant future populated mostly by women, and I dunno, folks, somehow a world with a bit less of the masculine touch might not be such a bad thing. Are men as necessary as women? Really? It's the old sperm versus egg question: Which comes first? After all, it only takes one guy with a Dixie cup and a pile of porn mags to populate a small country. Whoo-wee! Thar's a lot of swimmers in the pool, ladies! 
I wonder what the world would be like with fewer men hanging around trying to get laid and fighting all the time because they're horny? Might be for the best. Thus, my stanza on zygotes and seeds.

I liked the “tumble-weeds” and “warm winds” stanzas. But the ending stanzas were quite cautionary, and I would rather have had a bit more tongue-in-cheek humour in them, as is normally my wont. But sometimes tongue-in-cheek just won't do. So, that’s how she floats, matey! (Hey! Will that old guy ever turn the page?)

Cheers

*Fortunately, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Newfoundland and Labrador where part of the year icebergs float by. They’re now capturing and bottling the ice water from those magnificent structures before they melt away in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. I guess they’ve been doing this for a few years now. And it looks like their bottles are made of glass, so at least they won’t end up as plastic jetsam or in the guts of whales. I just hope their supply lasts.

 

Turn me upside down. Please!