20 Second Handjob

Is there anything else in the news?

I live in New York City

Like a worm in the Apple

Isolated, alone

Digging through my day

Each night darker than before

How about a war?

Countries aren’t getting along somewhere

Or a good old terrorist attack?

You can never find a mass murderer

When you need to distract

You can get a seat on the subway

Only there’s nowhere to go

Except the end of the line

So set them up, Joe

Only the bars are closed

Sitcom reruns

Books I’ve already read twice

Porn that no longer inspires me

Neighbors given up on nice

Passing strangers colder than ice

Outside the grocery store

It’s a Lewis Carrol story

Stand on the yellow line

Six feet from purgatory

The Red Queen beckons

We’re just pawns in the Pandemic

Hosts to the newest pathogen

Coughing, sweating, fretting

Starting not to breath

Good nurse, ventilator please

Bitch while you scrub

Your workless infected mitts

Death’s bony digits

Will collect all your chits

And no mask can hide you

Don Arrup

Satire1

Exposed

Satire1 takes to the quiet streets of Manhattan on this uncelebrated Saint Patrick’s Day to interview (at a distance of six feet) New Yorkers and now rare tourists on how COVID19 or the Corona Virus is affecting their life.

Woman in a big hat

“I’m wearing a big hat because I’m afraid to get my hair done. I don’t even know if they’re open. My husband uses sex to burn off anxiety and, well, it works.”

Man with a big nose

“I can smell the fear coming out of every building. I can’t smell the virus but your sweat and whatever you let go of in your pants when somebody nearby coughs is plain enough.”

Barkeep

“There used to be nothing better than a midweek St. Pat’s and New Year’s Eve. Well, this Cobitch19 has done a better job than Carrie Nation at closing us all down.”

Teenage girl wearing lipstick

“Of course we spent the day together. We were on a date. And duh, we held hands and other second date stuff. And now all the adults are telling me he exposed me? If he ever had his thing out I can tell you I didn’t see it. Gross.”

Boy on his bike

“I love snow holidays but I wouldn’t call this a plague holiday. It’s all homework and no friends and even when I’m off everything is closed. And I can’t visit my grandma. My teacher told us we could be carrying the crown and even though it doesn’t bother us it can really harm and even kill grandma. Even if it’s only one grandma in twenty that would still be somebody in my class losing their grandma. And a grandpa.”

Safe Saint Patrick’s Day

Don Arrup

Satire1

Now That Elizabeth Warren Is Out Of The Race

Got in a spank taxi

Bone barreling to Serendipity

With my couple friends Anxious and Guilty

To a building darker than a grave

It’s all the rave to see what you’re eating

Vegetables soaked in oil golden

Tomatoes fired out of cannons

But the meat is all carrion 

Warmed only by recently lost life

Blood black in the dim fingers of light

Streaming down the chins of parallelograms

Preposterous pig Plutocrats

Who’ve eaten up the country

And deliver our meals on tin plates and drones

Sell us tomes and their TV

For our life’s story

Which they use to enslave us more

Children sign contracts for a popsicle

Their independence gone before themselves they own 

Financial freedom the myth of raisin bread and virtual circuses

Wall Street now just the Vegas Strip East

Home ownership a booby trap

College debt an albatross

As our souls evaporate into liquidity

Burn Bernie Burn

The impurity out of the Demagogic Party

To take on the Red State Reactionaries

And their Custer locked bully

Bide your time Biden

Let the others tweet and shout

Put the mock back into democracy

While passions burn out

Liz wasn’t too brainy

But Harvard didn’t help

And it wasn’t her genitalia

That doomed her

In the land of empty calories and morbid obesity

She’s so skinny she makes us feel guilty

And now that she’s gone the world is ending

And all we can do is wash our hands for twenty seconds

Don Arrup

Satire1