The Shareholder's Tale

 

(Amid bar sounds, guy in suit confides to camera:)

 

I put down the old Reader's Index

and its load of wholesome gags

with a Republican chuckle.

 

Kennedy was still alive that year,

blocking the ascent of Josh Hawley

and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

 

I had responded to unblinking good humor

-- Mirth, the Best Medicine --

and contributed to our extinction.

 

Can you claim that in your hidden recesses,

behind the high walls of insight and virtue,

there's no echo of a slack-jawed har?

 

(Pauses, studies drink.)

 

Condemned to chortle, does the ghost of Limbaugh

look back through your reflection

off windows and mirrors?

 

Shall we meet the boys on the links

as big guns play at the border?

A liberal and a snow leopard walk into a bar.

​

(Burst of nearby raucous laughter.)