If You Take My Advice
If you take my advice, stop listening now.
But if you will not, then pay attention.
Those who follow see the butt of a cow,
Heeding the bell without comprehension.
Advice, even when so kindly given,
Points a path that may be unsafe to tread.
Bad advice ignored might be forgiven,
But does not guess better what is ahead.
Good advice, for which you want most to seek,
Often sounds the same as any other.
Without thought, the odds to part them is bleak;
Should you always listen to your Mother?
COVID Thanksgiving
(tune: Over the River)
Over the wifi and through the net
To Grandmother’s house we go.
Let Zoom show the way
To stay safe today
And limit CO-VID’s flow.
Over the wifi and through the net
Oh, how the plague does lurk.
It rides on air
And goes anywhere
As precautions we shirk.
Over the wifi and through the net
Is how to safely play.
On camera smile
And chat a while.
Be safe on Zoomsgiving Day!
Opposite of Tradition
Customs of our parents and those before,
Passed along to inform us what to do –
Traditions give us the knowledge of yore,
But what were these habits when they were new?
Thesaurus mostly list what they were not;
Un-accepted, un-orthodox, and such.
It is doing something you were not taught,
To free oneself, right or wrong, from past’s clutch.
How will our society judge the break
From the “tried and true” traditional norm?
Some future year may into custom take
What today kicks up a condemning storm.
Trump Concession (?) Speech
(tune: Leaving on a Jet Plane)
All the votes are cast
And I won bigly.
I’m standing here in my victory
I do not have to hate to say goodbye.
But the dawn is breaking
It’s the next morn
They’re still counting,
Margins being shorn.
Already I am so angry
I could sue.
So, stand by and cover me
Tell me that you’ll fight for me
Hold me like you’ll never let me go.
I ain’t leaving, you can’t make me,
Won’t go, I’ll be in charge, you’ll see.
Oh, no, I will not go.
There’s so many times you let me down
So many times you called me clown.
I tell you now, I don’t forget a thing.
Every place I go, I’ll get you back,
Every speech I make, you’ll get a smack,
Now I am back, you will kiss my ring.
So stop the count and bow down,
Tell me I will get the crown.
Hold me like you’ll never let me go.
I ain’t leaving, you can’t make me,
Won’t go, I’ll be in charge, you’ll see.
Oh, no, I will not go.
Votes are miscounted against me
All is stolen
You all miss me
Don’t close your eyes
As behind you, I crawl.
Dream of the years I gave us
When I alone could fix the muss
About the times when I ruled it all.
They did not stop, oh disaster,
Too little from the postmaster,
You didn’t hold me, you let me go.
I ain’t leaving, you can’t make me,
Won’t go, I’ll be in charge, you’ll see.
Oh, no, I will not go.
But they’re coming to drag me out
I go with kicking and a shout,
Oh, no, I will not go.
Vesper Flight
Join with us now on our vesper flight,
To soar aloft to discerning height,
To rise above common earthbound sight,
To average each wrong to choose right.
If voters thought as a flock of birds,
And could perceive beyond the blitz of words,
And reconcile choices of jocks and nerds,
What decision would then lead our herds?
Perhaps that is indeed what we do,
To electively sort so much through,
To together sift from clue to clue,
To reinforce our social glue.
Thanks to Helen Macdonald for the inspiration
View From the Ground
All too often it is our sorry plight
That so many wrongs do not make it right.
No math we know works with even just two,
Yet seldom we stop at only a few.
A swing left evokes return to the right,
Past plumb center on its opposite flight;
No pause in the compromising middle,
A leap into fire from the hot griddle.
So why entrust our fate to public vote
And cede our opinions on which we dote?
When herd mentality leads to a cliff,
Won’t you prefer to follow your own riff?
