Mister Fire Fire
Category: Satire
Mocking critiques in different forms. Targets include society, politics, religion, you.
A Beatnik Imitation — “Americalypse”
I wanted to imitate those kinds of elegies by beatniks who thought they were broken prophets or something.
Dear Post-America, no, Postal America,
I’m coughing myself to sleep on howling steps that were once the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, pillowed by the tombstones of Louis and Clark, spooning the mummified corpse of Sacagewea. I can see twin towers covered in fuselage and the dead men they swallowed. Before that we didn’t do ruins.
Now we are the modern Pompeii buried beneath newspapers and motel sixes, beneath brick and stone and the bones of Pharisees and Wall Street Brokers.
I’m foreign in a familiar land. I’m a bookless, homeless, bombed-out, burned-up pioneer in a dead world made of dead words facing a sea-washed statue liberated from meaning, her flame out, her arm stretched in the air as she sinks in the sand. Over there is a mountain with four worn-away faces, there’s Washington’s limp phallis, a white house sick with the blood of Indians and presidents. I start to think this is all one big middle finger to whoever came up with the phrase ideas never die and the phrase I’d give you the shirt off my back and to whoever thought democracy was immortal.
And I know the devil’s been most patient.
The Adventures of Lonely Frog!
Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders
Case of the Key Espy
From The Santa Barbara Hounds Case Files
Case File #1 #86
Agents Involved: Wilder, Percipheles and Reeves.
February 18th.
Wilder found a key #1203-16 on the grass near Storke Tower. On its head was printed University of California Santa Barbara: Duplication Prohibited. Attached to the keychain was a bottle opener with the word Bathroom taped on the side. Wilder took the keychain off and attached it to his own set of keys. After consulting Reeves and Percipheles about Case #86, he then sleuthed campus trying the key on different doorways, to no avail. HOUNDS!
February 19th.
During an interview with the campus newspaper The Bottomline, Wilder overheard mention that the key to The Bottomline’s handicapped restrooms was missing! He said he didn’t know anything about it. HOUNDS!
February 20th.
Wilder and Percipheles checked The Bottomline’s handicapped bathrooms. The key worked! After relieving themselves, they went back to The Studio and closed the case. They were going to celebrate with victory wine, but a fly had gotten into their bottle of Barefoot Sauvignon Blanc.
“What a buzz kill,” quipped Percipheles quite successfully. Reeves drank some anyway. They decided not to return the key as Wilder wanted to keep the bottle opener.
Case Solved
Desmond, Write 