THE GOLDEN CALF

by Gordon Gilbert

At CPAC.

He spoke appropriately enough

(although misspoken)

of a herd “mentality.”

He could have been speaking of

his own followers,

this super-spreader,

deliberately infecting their bodies

and their minds.

 

Now they wander in a desert of their own making,

mindless in their worship

of this golden orange-coiffed calf,

and at his bidding

they have set aside

the ten commandments,

for only one that now all must obey:

 

“Bow down

&

worship me!” 

 

Gordon Gilbert is a long time resident of the west village in NYC. He only took up writing seriously and performing his work in public in 2008. Since then, besides poetry, he has written many prose pieces (short stories, monologues, short fiction) and one play, Monologues from the Old Folks Home, which he has produced and directed eight times in the past seven years at various venues in lower Manhattan. He has hosted over a dozen programs celebrating the beat generation writers, as well as some other writers, including William Carlos Williams. Gordon is also a member of the Irish American Writers and Artists, and has occasionally hosted their bimonthly salons as well.  

STYMIED

by George Held

T***p wears mask in public for 1st time. The president told reporters, “I've never been against masks,” before departing the White House for Walter Reed Medical Center. Credit: Patrick Semansky/AP via ABC News, July 12, 2020

That is no planet for old men, or young –
the Earth contaminated by a virus
so deadly that in one great city
one in three hundred has become

infected and in a tiny Arkansas town
one in nineteen, and all the while
the most powerful man on Earth
wears no mask, except at Walter Reed.

Maybe a mask offers no more protection
than a rubber with a hole in it
but still, the President might wear one
at least to show concern for prophylaxis;

so those who mask up to walk to the post
office must encounter strapping young women
and men whose aplomb, arrogance, or disregard
for more vulnerable citizens

lends even a commonplace sortie
a risk like charging a machinegun
nest on Iwo Jima. But most old folks know
their time is up and dying from the virus

can be more efficient than falling victim
to a malignancy. An aged human
is but a decrepit thing, unlikely to remain
a golden bird upon a golden bough,

much less to sing to a careless emperor…

George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, is sheltering in Eastern Long Island.