i haven’t been keeping up with the news
i’ve been traveling
been through a lot of airports
had to catch the news on the fly
i see there’s some sort of controversy going on in the capital
and somewhere someone has shot someone else
a plane crashed (hate to see that news in an airport)
a ferryboat sank
there was a train wreck, i saw the footage of that
there’s a war, maybe more than one
while a freak storm blew in from the ocean
and another new planet was discovered
orbiting a neighboring star
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
cherries remind me of zachary taylor
old rough and ready, who accidentally killed himself one july day
through eating too many cherries, ripe and sweet
some say the pickles and ice cream didn’t help
it was independence day, at a time when slavery was an issue
man eats
god laughs
king john, so they say
ate too many eels, his favorite food
and they pretty much swam straight through him
some say it wasn’t eels, it was ale
or plums or peaches
divine justice or so they say
for his having lost the crown jewels in the river thames
not to mention that business with robin hood and the sheriff
and the lovely maid marian
she was a virgin (that’s unconfirmed)
and last i heard, god was still laughing
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“The future is unknown, and stands before a man like autumnal fogs rising from the swamps; birds fly foolishly up and down in it with flapping wings, never recognising each other, the dove seeing not the vulture, nor the vulture the dove, and no one knowing how far he may be flying from destruction.” – Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, “Taras Bulba,” Taras Bulba and Other Tales (trans. various)