Best Poems - Satirical

(sung by little girls skipping rope during 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic) 

“I had a little bird
And its name was Enza.
I opened the window
And in-flew-Enza.”

“Everybody here
is infirm.
Everybody here is infirm.
Oh. Mend me. Mend me. Lord.

Today I
say to them
say to them
say to them, Lord:
look! I am beautiful,
beautiful with
my wing that is wounded
my eye that is bonded
or my ear not funded
or my walk all a-wobble.
I’m enough to be beautiful.

You are
beautiful too.”

“Last night, a friend called
to say she’s dying of brain cancer.

Someone is drilling through the still
summer air. The sound clenches
my teeth.  It’s going in cleanly.
It leaves only a small hole.

My daughter pretends to wash
her hands. As if it were that easy
to wash off the dirt of this world.
She’s laughing and wants me
to laugh too, to share the joke
like her first secret.

My friend asked if I was watching
the big play-off game
between my team and her team

before she told me she’s dying,
I said no, I’m watching my kids.
That must have sounded

a little cold.  First time her team’s 
made the finals. My kids were screaming
about who goes first, who’s the leader.

She was hysterical over a hockey game,
suddenly a big fan. We’ve got some crazy birds
here who start chirping early—not even
close to morning, not a glimmer

of light anywhere. What the hell is she
doing, I ask my wife, as if she’s to blame.
What the hell is she doing

with cancer? She has a teenage son.
They were watching the game
together. Who’s drilling what
on this lazy afternoon? What makes

it lazy? If it’s lazy, does that make it
slower for the dying? It’s my birthday.
My kids are downstairs making me a crown.

The doctors talked her out of chemo. Too late.
She can still eat.  She’s lost a lot of weight.
I look good, she said.  I didn’t know what

to say on the other end.
Oh Debra, Oh Debra, I said
as if repetition could keep her

here.  On this earth. I want to be a spike 
nailed to it, but it’s my birthday—
I’m a stick man with a stick cane.

My son collects sunshine in baskets,
offers me some. I count the states
between us. Will I see her again?
I put on my crown, tilt it
at a jaunty angle. We practice

blowing out the candles. I clean off the Z
on my keyboard. it doesn’t get used much.
The A looks great. Hey kids, let’s not answer
the phone, hey kids, let’s wash our hands
before we eat.

She knows what’s up. She’s keeping
her hair, dyeing it blond,
like she always wanted. Fuck ’em,

she said, and started to cry.
It was between periods.
They were going to start up again soon—
she had to go, go, go.

Hope your team wins, I said,
even if it means beating mine.

Fuck ’em, I agreed, and there was nothing
more to say.

I lay sleepless in twisted sheets.
3 A.M. The birds were chirping.
Already? I said.”

"This is for Elsa, also known as Liz,
an ample-bosomed gospel singer, five
discrete malignancies in one full breast.
This is for auburn Jacqueline, who is
celebrating fifty years alive,
one since she finished chemotherapy.
with fireworks on the fifteenth of July.
This is for June, whose words are lean and mean
as she is, elucidating our protest.
This is for Lucille, who shines a wide
beam for us with her dark cadences.
This is for long-limbed Maxine, astride
a horse like conscience. This is for Aline
who taught her lover to caress the scar.
This is for Eve, who thought of AZT
as hopeful poisons pumped into a vein.
This is for Nanette in the Midwest.
This is for Alicia, shaking back dark hair,
dancing one-breasted with the Sabbath bride.
This is for Judy on a mountainside,
plunging her gloved hands in a glistening hive.
Hilda, Patricia, Gaylord, Emilienne,
Tania, Eunice: this is for everyone
who marks the distance on a calendar
from what's less likely each year to 'recur.'
Our saved-for-now lives are life sentences
—which we prefer to the alternative."

“Daybreak until nightfall,
he sat by his wife at the hospital
while chemotherapy dripped
through the catheter into her heart. 
He drank coffee and read
the Globe. He paced; he worked
on poems; he rubbed her back
and read aloud.  Overcome with dread,
they wept and affirmed
their love for each other, witlessly,
over and over again.
When it snowed one morning Jane gazed
at the darkness blurred
with flakes. They pushed the IV pump
which she called Igor
slowly past the nurses’ pods, as far
as the outside door
so that she could smell the snowy air.”

“Viruses, when the lens is right,
change into a bright bouquet.
Are such soft forms of pure delight
viruses? When the lens is right,
instead of swarms of shapeless blight,
we see them in a Renoir way.
Viruses when the lens is right
change into a bright bouquet.”