01:51:35 pm on
Thursday 28 Mar 2024

Pandemic Couplets
David Simmonds

Omicron:
Be gone!

Will the virus
Expire us?

Not wearing a mask?
You’ll be taken to task

Huddled in my family bubble
I can’t get myself in trouble

“Give me liberty or give me death”
- the anti-vaxxer’s final breath

Two long years of hibernation
Can I bear more isolation?

At Dr. Kjeran Moore’s insistence
I’ll maintain a six foot distance

Teresa Tam has often said it
To sing out loud can quickly spread it

No more firmly shaken hand
The elbow bump's the new command

Stick a Q-tip up my nose
I’ll come out smelling like a rose

If you want to stay alive
Use a mask - N-95

I think I’m going to have a fit
Can’t get a rapid testing kit

To advocate for drinking bleach
Should be sufficient to impeach

Two jabs and now a booster shot
I suspect a deep state plot

As I pass through the airport gate
They tell me I must isolate

When Covid happened on our planet
We should have passed a law to ban it

Without a proof of vaccination
I’m banned from Tim’s - no hesitation

Ventilators, ICUs
Neither is the one I’d choose

Covid 19, Covid 19
Meanest virus I’ve ever seen

Hope they find a good vaccine

Or I’ll end up in quarantine

Where I’ll relax and eat poutine
Read Reader’s Digest magazine
Making for an awful scene

Some readers seem intent on nullifying the authority of David Simmonds. The critics are so intense; Simmonds is cast as more scoundrel than scamp. He is, in fact, a Canadian writer of much wit and wisdom. Simmonds writes strong prose, not infrequently laced with savage humour. He dissects, in a cheeky way, what some think sacrosanct. His wit refuses to allow the absurdities of life to move along, nicely, without comment. What Simmonds writes frightens some readers. He doesn't court the ineffectual. Those he scares off are the same ones that will not understand his writing. Satire is not for sissies. The wit of David Simmonds skewers societal vanities, the self-important and their follies as well as the madness of tyrants. He never targets the outcasts or the marginalised; when he goes for a jugular, its blood is blue. David Simmonds, by nurture, is a lawyer. By nature, he is a perceptive writer, with a gimlet eye, a superb folk singer, lyricist and composer. He believes quirkiness is universal; this is his focus and the base of his creativity. "If my humour hurts," says Simmonds,"it's after the stiletto comes out." He's an urban satirist on par with Pete Hamill and Mike Barnacle; the late Jimmy Breslin and Mike Rokyo and, increasingly, Dorothy Parker. He writes from and often about the village of Wellington, Ontario. Simmonds also writes for the Wellington "Times," in Wellington, Ontario.

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