PAD Day 27: Happy Birthday to Me

Yeah, it's my birthday, and this year it's hard to get excited about it, but I did have a nice brunch at home with my wife, son and daughter-in-law and two grandkids, and my other three sons and my sister-in-law attended via Zoom. Today was a more normal day (by current standards, anyway), and I got a lot of nice birthday wishes via Facebook (the first coming from India and Australia, where the day of course starts much earlier). I also got a nice personal greeting from my poet friend Marge Piercy. I usually write a poem about my birthday each year, but this year one just wasn't forthcoming. Maybe later.

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "massive" poem, and (2) write a poem in the form of a review, specifically, something that would not normally be reviewed. Well, I wrote a pretty "massive" (as in long) poem two days ago (massive for me, anyway), so I wasn't going to let the first prompt dictate the length of the poem itself, but I did work in the word "massive". One of the suggestions for the second prompt was a review of this year, 2020, so I ran with that, trying to mimic one of those scathing, vindicative but sometimes clueless reviews that you find on Yelp, TripAdvisor, Amazon, and the like. Kind of satirical but tongue-in-cheek too, I guess.

Yelp Review of Year 2020

This is the worst year I've ever been in!

You can't find a restaurant that will seat you!

There are no movies playing,

no concerts, no sporting events -

you can't even visit a park

or get a tattoo or a haircut!

This place is dead, and the people

walk around wearing masks

and act like they're trying to avoid you!

Even going to a grocery store is a chore -

I had to wait outside in line for an hour!

And then they were out of everything -

I mean, who doesn't stock toilet paper?

The only good thing I can say is

the traffic isn't bad, and the air

is pretty clean, and gas is cheap.

But zero nightlife! I might as well stay home!

This year has been a massive disappointment!

I'm never coming back to it again!!!

(One star)