Remember the days
when you dreaded
a scratch at the back
of your throat --
harbinger of a cough
that you thought
would get you rushed off
to quarantine.
Or, at least, get a footlong swab
shoved through your nasal cavity.
Best case, it would put all eyes upon you,
as the public wondered whether
you were their Typhoid Mary --
(Except Mary was asymptomatic,
and - clearly - you were not.)
We all learned that the one cough
that one can never suppress
is the one that you desperately
wish to.
That cough won't be silenced.
A grouchy nitwit wrote a polemic about how Yetis had caused the Pandemic. The Yetis protested, and kindly requested the man ponder head-in-ass hygienics.
I
A young man set his ex-fiancé on fire.
(Or, so the story goes.
[He claims she self-immolated.])
She succumbed to third-degree burns...
but not right away.
She lived long enough to know
the agony of third-degree burns.
They'd met in college,
both studying to be engineers --
I mention that because
at the heart of the issue was caste.
It seems absurd enough
to murder a fiancé over
some imaginary mark of superiority,
but even more so when one considers
that they would have had the same qualification --
possibly similar jobs --
but for the boy's bigoted parents,
who insisted he call off the engagement,
and the boy, himself,
who took things that extra murderous mile.
So, it wasn't even about who the couple were,
it was about what their grandfathers
did for a living.
What a world.
II
The war is still burning.
Among the latest questions are:
Will Belarus be forced to join in the fighting?
&
If so, will having another set
of soldiers who are completely uninterested in the war --
other than as a trial to be survived, that is --
help or hurt Putin's position?
A related question is whether Putin
would rather watch the world burn
than to lose face?
What a world.
III
The Pandemic said, "Psyche!"
This means America will roll the odometer
on COVID deaths.
We had things almost back to normal,
and then the virus caught its breath,
got it's footing,...
whatever viruses do.
What a world.
***
I think I'll check the news, again,
maybe sometime next year.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 