PAD Challenge Day 26: Will We Be Fine?

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem with the title "_______ World," and (1) write a parody poem, one that spoofs or pays playful homage to another poem.

I actually decided to go with a song lyric today. It's a parody of a well-known song by R.E.M., updated for our times. I did keep some of their more generic lines, made some word changes in others, and totally replaced a number of them, but tried to keep the rhythm and structure of the original so you can sing along to it, if you choose to try.

It's the End of the World 

(apologies to Michael Stipe)
 
Some fuss, it starts with a virus
spreading on a city bus
And Fauci is advising us
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn,
World serves its own needs,
paying for our misdeeds,
Speed it up a notch, we got no strength
and our teeth start to chatter
For a fear of death, short breath
Fire on the mire, represent the seven sins
And the government for hire and a drive-in site
Left home, we are coming in a hurry
With the COVID breathing down our neck,
Science teams, reporters baffled, Trump comes unhinged
hawks hydroxycholor-o-quine
Uh-oh, overflow, hospitals are full or woe,
But it'll do, save yourself, serve yourself,
World serves its own needs, listen to your heartbeat,
Maskless in the Rapture with the reverent in the right, right,
you vitriolic, patriotic, rights fight, hurl brick,
feeling pretty sick
 
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it and we'll feel fine....
 
Six o'clock, TV hour, don't get caught in numbers dour,
slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn,
Rogue cops in uniform, towns burning, bloodletting,
Every motive escalate, human rights incinerate,
light a candle, light a storefront, calm down, take down,
Watch his knee crush, crush, oh no
This means no fear, cavalier and in the clear
A plethora, a plethora, a plethora of lies
Offering solutions, offering alternatives but they're declined
 
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it but we'll be fine....
 

The other night I distanced, I distanced and I stayed inside
Vaccines sit unused, George Floyd, Ted Cruz,
Q-Anon, Biden, Breonna and Kamala,
Mitch McConnell, Pfizer, Moderna, boom 
You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but NECK, right, right
 
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it, will we be fine?...

And here is the original video of R.E.M.'s song: