Evolve and Die: A Secular Prayer Or Get a Grip

The Race is On:

Human vs. Virus.

Who’s stronger, who’s faster, who’s smarter, Dr. Darwin?

Or may I call you Chuckie babe?

Who will win?

Or it is still

all about virtue and sin?

How the hell do those tricky, invisible, itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny, mutant micro-bastards

manage to outfox

our enormous, gargantuan, fabulous, stupendous, titanic, ever-evolving,

homo-sappy brains?

I mean, can a novel coronavirus

write a novel?

Play the organ?

Host a panel of scientists?

I guess they are like racoons;

the faster we tighten our garbage bin lids,

the more we turbocharge their fur-lined ids

and accelerate their fucking evolution

via the prehensile grip.

Bin dere, done dat.

Ya gotta eat.

What’s the drill,

smarty pants politicians?

Or better to ask

the smirking morticians?

Dumm down,

dick-tates Agent Orange,

and make like underpaid ants,

six feet apart or

six feet under.

Economy trumps Ecology

every time,

Eccccch…

The Con is On.

But, hey,

“let’s be honest”,

many people think

the Crime Boss of the Dis-United States of Paranoia

may be the most voracious mother-fucker virus of all time,

the impervious thief-in-chief,

hiding in plain sight,

no sign of relief.

Global Village Idiots Unite!

Out with out-of-touch elites,

in with insane hillbillies,

crazy-like-the-fox (News)

but thinking fatally

inside the coughin’ box.

Quoth Donald Trump, People Magazine, 1998:

“If I were to run for President,

I’d run as a Republican.

They’re the dumbest group of voters

In the country.

They believe anything

on Fox News.

I could lie

and they’d still eat it up.

I bet my numbers would be terrific.”

Then again, ever think

the trickster is here for a damn good reason-in-disguise,

and it ain’t necessarily treason,

cycles-of-history-wise?

He may even save democracy.

The Consumer Society is conning/consuming us all,

the biblical plague of locusts

eating East Africa,

and swarming due West

for all the rest.

What’s a meta-phor?

Like the black monolith on the moon

in 2001: A Space Odyssey,

the coronavirus is an alarm clock,

a wake up call

beamed to the Twilght Zone aliens

who planted viruses on earth

in the first place,

disguised as Chinese bats out of hell.

(Ozzie Osbourne,

he thought he knew

what to do:

chew!).

9/11 happened in 2001.

Coincidence, Stanley? I don’t think so.

24 hours in a day,

24 Corona beers in a case.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

I could go on.

When toothy lion kings

take down the weak and sick zebra-meat,

they improve the health of the herd.

Cruel, but truthy.

And that’s me talkin’,

a cat with grey fur

peppering my balding pate,

a Septuagenarian this September,

my hour is growing late.

Some believe Gen X/millennial Whoo-whoo-han virologists

conspired to bump off

their tired, aging, rich boomer parents

to inherit the earth

and the remote control.

Was it worth it, Yang?

I wish you had given Yin a call

before unleashing the cull.

Oh, the twisted, devious plot of the human psychodrama,

I can barely spare it a thought,

but hey, mama,

never a dull moment.

My own idol,

the busy bunny Eric Idle,

hung up on the Easter cross,

seems immune from strife and loss:

Always Look On the Bright Side of Life.

After the Black Plague

came the Renaissance.

Soon everybody will be painting!

After World War #1,

we pissed ourselves

all over the Jazz Age.

After World War #2,

we grunted a nice long poo,

and out slipped the Sixties.

Peace, Love, Understanding – no one could stand it.

Swing low, sweet Zeitgeist,

we are getting another shot at birthing

an actual civilization

(and not just vaccines

dominating the scenes;

don’t forget, folks,

viruses have virtues and uses

as secret agents,

natural immunization-wise;

stay-at-homebodies kill their own anti-bodies).

The time has come for

universal basic income

saith Saint Bernie,

our wrinkled karmic commie.

Who needs boobs

when he’s nicer than mommie?

Are we now all finally agreed

that unfettered capitalism is a global slave-ship

of pathological greed,

divorced from the reality of modest, individual need?

Quite properly,

First Nations have no concept of private property;

yo, Kimosabe, why not grab your last chance

to snap the mass trance,

get down

and dig the cosmic, indigenous dance?

Savvy?

Let me put

a catchy bug in your ear.

Picture, if you will

(without aid of a pill):

upon a single command,

we flock back to the land,

filling our days

with hails of emails,

squirting each other with hilarious viral videos

ad infinitum,

world without addendumb.

A pundemic!

No more handshakes, Masons,

and let’s lose the seig heils.

What splendid isolation

did for Ziggy Freud

ain’t necessarily

something to avoid.

Surprise, surprise,

he told us so

120 years ago:

dreaming is good for us,

letting off psychic steam.

Back to bed,

better well read than dead,

and oh yeah, don’t forget sex,

maybe even with your ex

for 40 days and nights.

Fucking biblical.

(Careful with that ax, Eugene.

Whatever you do,

don’t watch The Shining,

not much in the way of a silver lining).

How about readings of The Decameron at de Cameron House

on Zoom,

casting off feelings of doom?

Panic, schmanic.

Depressed is better than manic.

We are only as strong as our weakest link,

don’t you think?

I have a hunch it’s time to slip

a bunch of magic mushrooms

into the stockbroker’s liquid lunch.

Time to take stock, retrench and learn French.

Time to pour another drink and

turn on Englebert Humperdinck.

When the crunch of baby boom comes,

the teeming brats of the 2030s

will be called Quaranteens.

Boom, boom. 

When you tell a COVID-19 joke,

you wait two weeks to see if

you got it.

With 2020 hindsight,

maybe we will see the timing of the virus

as synchronistic,

the final call to redeem a bad scene,

breakdown as breakthrough,

boo-boo.

Hey, Heinz, do we really need 57 varieties of parrot food?

Here’s a germ of an idea:

how about a shotgun marriage

               between

the UN and the WHO to form

You-Know-Who.

Greta Thunberg,

an Asperger genius who cannot lie,

throws the world’s collective wealth

into the Grand Canyon,

then re-distributes it equally among

8 billion souls:

$1 million in cash,

1 three storey mansion,

1 Ferrari,

1 yacht,

1 Starbucks points card

EACH.

Re-distributive justice!

No whining, please,

when the One-Percenter, survival-of-the-fattest, masters of sleaze,

cornering the market

on six foot poles,

suck up the lion’s share of the loot

with ease

within the fiscal year.

Lest we forget,

the Return of the Repressos

demand a return on investment:

Oy! Where’s my ROI?

There’s no accounting for avarice

cross-bred with fear.

In the mean-time,

we sit tight at home,

unless we are homeless,

tethered to the Unreality TV show

we mistake for life,

bonding with the pooch on the porch:

Stay! Sit! Beg! Speak! Trust!

(Come to think of it,

not so different from my Skinner Box childhood,

obeying six feet of physical and emotional distance

without a rat-peep of resistance).

So why am I strangely moved

by the nightly communal clanging of pots and pans,

sounding like Zulu warriors

shaking their shields,

panning the pandemic,

even as I risk my skin

hunting for vicious, sabre-toothed Miss Vickys

on the jungle paths of Blawblaws?

Why are all those masks and scarves so damn sexy?

The Phantom of the Opera,

The Lone Ranger,

Zorro,

Batman,

and your garden variety jihadist or stick-up man

are onto something:

we love you – back off!

The N95 visor may be wiser,

but pink panties do the trick

for someone as sick

as me.

When the green light comes at last,

we will be released with a blast

onto Young Street

V-E Day Redux,

ripping off our veils of tears,

French-kissing random strangers,

or worse,

spreading a fresh mess of V-D.

It’s always something.

Hey boss,

can we invent a new system of profit-and-loss

taken from the words of the prophets

written on the subway walls?

Just think

(and think justly):

for the first time in human history,

death-phobic humans are sharing consciousness  

of the Great Mystery

simultaneously.

Even Jesus is confessing:

“Verily, mass media is more popular than mass,

and even me.”

Marshalling McLuhan,

will the global village

stop the pillage?

Notice how the crisis,

better than ISIS,

shut down the global carbon dump

and hello, presto,

the air is now clean as a blown whistle.

Lift your pale boot

off the throat of Mama Nature;

given a half a chance,

we might hear the twitter of birdsong.

Let’s give the middle digit to the zero-sum game of the Digital Age!

Scroll back to the analogue page!

Get the message,

crazy-ape-who-shits-in-its own-nest?

Look what happens

when left to your own

de-vices.

This is a test.

Abide the Gospel According to Kurt Vonnegut:

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around,

and don’t let anybody tell you different.”

To everything there is a season;

do we need any more reason

to upgrade

the Top 10 Commandments?

As you please yourself, police yourself.

Cleanse the unwept lungs of the world.

Love your body, gargle anti-bodies.

Life is a crapshoot,

but please,

squeeze the Charmin, not the trigger.

Reality, even if vicious,

beats virtual reality.

Keep your ironic distance.

Less is more,

more or less.

Floss.

Every Breath You Take,

Corona Virus Disease of 2019 will be watching

(and hoping to abbreviate) you.

You don’t want to meet C0VID-20,

but if you do,

let us pray

that before Donald Duck’s next erection,

or the upcoming election,

it naturally selects those

suffering from underlying conditions

of lies and stupidity.

Our Father who Art in Carney,

Hollow be thy name dropping.

Thy Kink-dom Come,

Thy will be done on Eartha Kitt

As it is in your lawyer’s office.

Give us this day our daily fake news

And forgive us our fake orgasms

As we forgive them who stole our mojo.

And lead us not into Interpretation

But deliver us from Reality TV,

For thine is the Skydome,

The power play and the glory hole,

For never and never,

Say “Ahh”, White Men.

James FitzGerald, April 2020