by Philip Stern
written in serious wordplay
Now the emergingcy
is over,
caution and funding
are over.
Yesterday, one of our leaders went mything.
He said it was a hoax.
Then said
it would not blast.
Then sold equine and oquine
and proposed bleach
to the fringe bleacher seats
at his attent show.
He watched as
the wildfirus burned
ungoverned,
saw it sprinkle hot ashes
on refrigerated
covid wagons
circling hospitals
where breathless bodies stiffened.
Yet mythed messages still burn,
about dangers of masking
and vaccines that damnage DNA,
still cause national dysfusion.
So do we now just forget
that we gallowed
over one million deaths
to happen?
Philip Stern is 95, had a poem published in The Atlantic in 1957, wrote pop songs in the 60s, and started writing poetry again after retiring from college teaching.