Unmentionable Punch

My first thought, when Rommy Cortez-Driks asked for poems using one of the Words This Web Site Does Not Use, was "Why not just pretend I missed this one?"

Then I opened another Youtube video and heard another profoundly obnoxious ad for a product that purports to cover up, at least temporarily, the symptoms of reactions people commonly have to either or both of:

(a) certain medications most of them probably don't need to use, notably including antidepressants and heavy-duty painkillers; or

(b) glyphosate. 

In an ideal world, people advertising this kind of less-than-helpful products would be required to create advertisements that told the truth about the situation. This particular patent remedy is known for a little chant that repeats the product's four-syllable name three times. They might, for example, have to pay for ads that say "If you've been paying for patent medicines to treat internal bleeding conditions that may have been diagnosed as Crohn's Disease or ulcerative colitis, have you tried treating the original problem? Internal bleeding is often a chemical reaction, most commonly to glyphosate and next most often to serotonin-boosting antidepressants! If your symptoms have either improved, or become much stranger and harder to predict, this year, it's probably the former! If you take antidepressants, it's probably the latter! (It could be BOTH!) By saving your money, YOU can also SAVE YOUR COLON! Stop poisoning stop poisoning stop POI-SON-INGGGGG!" 

In our world, we have a President who is extremely controversial, extremely divisive, and extremely old for his job, who won the election by teaming up with an activist who was on a mission to tell the world about this kind of thing. The corporate lobbyists were not pleased. Admittedly the President and the activist made a deal that, the first year, our activist Secretary of Public Health would spare the corporations with which the President has been involved--not Bayer, but a competitor that cashed in on glyphosate, being high on the list--and stick to nagging people about "health" advice that annoys more people than it startles. "Be careful crossing streets! Oooh! Oooh! Don't eat sweets! Oooh! Oooh!" is a very old song government officials have no business singing to their employers the taxpayers. Kennedy has a mandate that is more important than that. He's not forgotten it. Nor has Trump. Kennedy's not going after Bayer, Lilly, Merck, and the other corporations that sell "pesticide" sprays and antidepressant pills, merely makes both him and Trump look weak. 

Granted, his going after the corporations might easily get either of them killed. Granted, the corporations have sacrificed all ethical constraints to profiteer on products that have caused a lot of deaths, and probably would stoop to violence to preserve those profits. I do understand these men's situation, firsthand, and personally. We're old, we're bold...but there are so many other things we want to do before becoming martyrs...!

Does this situation warrant a snarky take on a classical poetic form? Well, yes, actually it does. And hold your ears if it bothers you--I feel rhymes that mix unstressed "-y" and stressed "ee" vowels coming on. Blame it on the product name using Y to spell the short I sound inside a syllable.

Does an unmentionable punch

Sometimes, but unpredictably,

Destroy hours from breakfast to lunch,

Or lunch to supper, it may be?

Are you enslaved to a tyranny

That never dares to speak its name

In respectable company?

Is Bayer or Lilly or Merck to blame?

Have you sought medical advice

For other chronic malady

And heard, for a tremendous price,

"A nutrient deficiency"?

Have those expensive dietary

Supplements vanished as in flame,

Without one benefit you see?

Is Bayer or Lilly or Merck to blame?

Do you avoid Thanksgiving's feast?

O'er restaurant dates choose celibacy?

Last Christmas party, called a priest?

Are you doomed to misanthropy

When even undipped chips, you see,

Lead only to disgust and shame?

And so must social eating be?

Is Bayer or Lilly or Merck to blame?

Political chicanery

These days seems hardly cause for shame,

But--Trump must unchain Kennedy!

Is Bayer or Lilly or Merck to blame?