This is NOT the 54th addition of my year-end poem. Per usual, I spent the year collecting items of news and a too long list of many who died during the last twelve months and began my post-Thanksgiving rhymathon. I got this far:
I apologize in advance
For the lack of New Year’s cheer
There simply isn’t much cheeriness to report
About a mostly fucked last year
Nature took it’s toll
Earthquakes, floods and famine
Of biblical proportion
And yes, I did examine
The graphs and charts and video
We’re mucking up our planet
Pouring fuel on the flame of who-gives-a-crap
And taking every opportunity to fan it
There’s plenty of war to go around
The middle east is about to blow
And lots of morons are taking sides
About shit they just don’t know
Students seem to be the worst
Then, celebrities taking stands
Amid worthless politicians
Making uneducatedly stupid demands
There are simply no solutions
To hatred practiced for thousands of years
On the torturous, steady march we’ve chosen
Along an endless trail of tears
Antisemitic, Islamophobic
Racism on the rise
One tribe in search of another
To belittle and despise
You know, like that asshole, Henry Ford
Who hated Jews, but sold them cars
And was Hitler’s inspiration
To inflict the permanent scars
Of six million deadly cuts
On the souls of all mankind
One might think the pendulum swing would have made us
More peaceful and more kind
But, alas
World governance has skewed despotic
Fascists swarming, thick as flies
And that’s never gone well historically
So, it should come as no surprise
That poverty and homelessness
Starvation and disease
Are more rampant in a world that could end all that
But
Solutions wouldn’t please
The Putins or the Orbans
The Mileis or the Trumps
Who are openly and notoriously
Treating everyone else as chumps
They want to end democracy
So, life’s about to really, really suck
Because there’s just one voting day left
Before we’re totally out of luck
And
If you don’t believe America can fall
Ask a Roman or a Greek
Because 248 years is hardly much longer
Than most people’s Wordle streak
…and, I thought, who needs to hear crap like that? I mean, I really do wish you all peace, health and happiness for the coming year and if I were ever lucky enough to stumble upon one of those genii wish lamps, I promise you that the careful, years-long consideration I’ve given to my three choices would make everything better. Besides, it just recently came to my attention that some of my closest friends have never made it through thirty-plus pages of occasionally clever couplets. So, no more epic rhyming…or reading…just a simple ditty.
If you wouldn’t mind
Please
Be kind!
Joelie
1.01.2024
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