Bloom: 3 pieces

 "I pledge allegiance" 

I pledge allegiance

the young gray-shirts recite their chorus
this day, as every other day
but on this day, they stumble

to the flag
of bleeding stripes
there's so much firecracker red
smoke creeps into the courtyard, the
hallways

of the United States of America
and I wondered
why they said it like robots,
why they always finished before their
leader

and to the Republic
honestly, fuck all this geniality
you can't play victim when you caused the
stampede

for which it stands
do you stand? or were you planted in a ground
that cannot hold?
when the gates open, flood will breach
the class will run together, a herd

one nation
divided in an endless number of other ways
check boxes
and I see their fists raise
defiant

under God
they make a promise
we turn out the lights

indivisible
one of them keeps whispering
even as his knees shake

with liberty
and the ricochets,
repeating an empty mantra
this oath, his promise

for all
to this country.

"If It Seems Too Good to Be True, It Was Probably Said by Somebody with a Trust Fund"

Someone (probably a Rockefeller) once said,
"Laughter is the best medicine." Actually, I conducted a
survey
and found that 9 out of 10 people recommend healthcare &
antibiotics, but laughter won't put you into
medical debt and doesn't cost any PTO.

I wonder what illness they imagined a prescription of
laughter could fix
because I laughed all night and still woke up sick.
Are there over-the-counter bottles of giggles I can take
when all the smiles have gone away?

No one talks about the side effects—stomach cramps,
sore cheeks, the pronounced loneliness of silence
that follows a gut-busting roar
Or how I went to the office, blood caking my lungs
because I've been out sick for months
as if illness can be quantified
or  contagions contained
recovery restricted to a number of hours, minutes, or days
(7.5 hour shifts to be exact)

Maybe a CEO is the only one
who can afford to laugh
in the face of despair,
or keep their health along with their care
It's the worker's dilemma—
rest in exchange for a sliced paycheck
every day morphing into dollar signs
a business blueprint
that a gulp of glee can't redesign

(Just like this bottle of pills
      that gouge my pocket
      while keeping me
      alive)

It's so funny, isn't it?
When the solution to your problems is free,
laughter must be the rich man's medicine
because it's really just killing me. 

"Bubbe"