1. Famous Raincoat: Them Were The Days!
-- RIP Leonard Cohen (1924 – 10 Nov 2016)*
Ah torrential stadium shows to flatbed truck groupies,
after the dope’s worn off, my money spends
the way your money spends down on Boogie Street.
Coy coifed Superfly’s post factual pecker checks into
Mount Baldy’s Zen Center to try to get dry alone
in a damp forest hut before master Sasaki Roshi and I
piehole Stoli + tonic as we zip out the back door where
Country Joe’s Porpoise Mouth cues quicksilver messages
reordaining how to become wet then blue on Boogie Street.
* Kaddish is the Jewish prayer of mourning
2. BYO Bourbon: Nations That Live in Glass Houses Shouldn’t...
Not shabby compared to a stone’s throw ‘cross the Yalu where puerile Kim
earns warmongering spurs, state so poor citizens starve while sustaining
nuclear arsenals; Prez Xi, China’s supreme leader, imposed crowd-
sourced standard-issue catchphrases to imprint Politburo restraint:
• North Korean watches
• Self-serve meals, egg drop soup (no abalone)
• Share shark fin for dinner, hotel rooms – bring your own toiletries and booze.
At this year’s People’s Congress, Louis Vuitton gift bags aren’t mentioned, or
political prisoners’ sustenance described by outlaw poet Liao:
• Fried tofu for women who allow enforcers to dally daily.
• Smoked duck for live-in girls who offer special pleasurable seduction.
• Stewed ox nose while guards ram fingers up nostrils until the inmates faint.
• Noodleless broth chocked with as much waste paper as dissidents can squirrel.
* Gruel till kidneys harvested from peasants are transplanted in honchos.
Post plenum, the State Council voted unanimously both to flood
the country with Britain’s International Centre for Prison Rate
Studies which ranked the US worst/ first, PRC 124; and
increase funds to block Voice of America broadcasts that count countries’
executions-- China dead last (US fifth from bottom unmentioned).
Tit for tat, Beijing blanketed May Day airwaves with New York Public
TV’s Frontline special, America: Prison State. Yadda yadda.
Author bio:
Gerard Sarnat MD’s won prizes and been nominated for Pushcarts/Best of Net Awards, authored four collections, is widely published including by Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Virginia Commonwealth, Johns Hopkins and in Gargoyle, Margie, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, Los Angeles Review, Voices Israel, Tishman Review, Fiction Southeast. gerardsarnat.com.
