Believe the SCIENCE


write a portrait poem that focuses on or plays with the meaning of the subject’s name.

The feathered victims of the pharm
Flock to lifestyles of abuse.
Fowlers pledge to do no harm
Farming that golden goose . . .
Commissions earned, increasing sales
Keep them lining up for meds.
Advertising never fails;
Meds, then meals, then beds.
Hail our nation’s clueless clients:
Cooped-up shuffling drug-addled souls
Victims of inhuman science
And its godless goals.
Lately, massive medication
Sold to help us all relax
Stupefies a toxic nation
Johnson and Johnsoned to the max
Getting Sacklered, Pfizering out
Astra-Zenecaed to the gills
Facts which ought to make you doubt
Waiting for re-fills.
Perhaps you should not medicate
Nor fill the coffers of the rich
When Psychiatry serves the state
its patients to bewitch…

Smoking Mistress Nicotine’s Sister in an upright bent poker tonight.
Upon unzipping her can and lowering her inner lining there is a pronounced initial note of excited unlit tobacco. The leaf is very moist, almost slippery in lubricity and takes the flame like a 22 year-old virgin on her honeymoon. Pack me hard, I want a long smoke tonight, she murmurs as I look for a match. She arches up, desiring to burn and be transmuted into holy smoke. Upon relight, there is a distinct taste of female sweat and pheromones. Initial room note is comparable to that girl at the 10th grade spring dance when you snuck in some apricot brandy. Partway into the bowl, the sophomoric fumblings become more enjoyably experienced and there is a shared sense of tobacco torpor. Deep in the bowl she asks if you will smoke her for the rest of your life. Yes, you answer, breathing heavily.
A smoldering jungle of desire:
Where you discern her smoke, there’s fire.
Pulsating tunnel of delight,
She swells again upon re-light.
Her rounded bowl accepts my flame
Excusing her from any blame.
After the last spasmodic puff of smoke dies, there is a lingering pleasure which pulsates in the cooling bowl and makes you want to smoke again. I rate this tobacco very highly indeed.


