Today's dual prompts from NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem about something huge, and (2) write a poem about "power." The two seem to blend together very well, and it just so happens that I read an article in the most recent New York Times Magazine this morning about the unimaginable (huge) amount of money that Jeff Bezos (powerful) has. It used some startling, offbeat and even amusing graphics to demonstrate the disparity of wealth between Bezos and us of the hoi polloi. For instance if wealth were temperature, the average person's "temperature" would be 52 degrees Fahrenheit ("sweater weather"), Mitch McConnell would be as hot as a pizza oven (900 degrees), Dolly Parton would be the heat of lightning (50,000 degrees) and Bezos would be the core of the sun (27,000,000 degrees, or 450 feet higher than the top of the thermometer graphic on the page). So anyway, here is my not-so-accurate take on such comparisons:
(after the New York Times Magazine article by Mona Chalabi)
If you are the ant crawling up a chair leg,
Jeff Bezos is the elephant in the room,
or maybe a herd of elephants in an airplane hangar.
If you have one song on your Spotify playlist,
Jeff Bezos has every song ever recorded since 1934.
If you have a three-month-old issue of Time Magazine,
Jeff Bezos has the Library of Congress.
If you live in a shotgun shack in rural Alabama,
Jeff Bezos has the Palace of Versailles, the Taj Mahal,
and the Burj Kahlifa.
If you have a single McDonald's burger,
Jeff Bezos has every one of the billions served
since they started counting.
If you made $150 delivering newspapers this week,
Jeff Bezos bought every street you delivered them on,
plus the town, the county, the newspaper you worked for,
and the forest used to make all that paper.
If the average size of a man's penis is about 5 inches,
Jeff Bezos' is the size of a rocket ship.
If you are five feet, eight inches tall,
you are taller than Jeff Bezos.
4 comments:
Here's to phallic symbols sent into the cosmos.
Oh my gosh ... that's the funniest thing I've read all day ... all week! Maybe all year! The last two stanzas are the best part. First because his spaceship looks like a penis, and second because there IS a way to be larger than Bezos! Great poem, Bruce, thanks.
Bruce, this is as good as the Darth Vader poem I published of yours.
Thanks, Vince!
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