Our day at the park
Having fun on the ark
Will begin as we stroll up the ramp
With the mammals and dino’s
And strange hellifino’s
And all of it, gaudy and camp
There are creatures in twos
Like the grandest of zoos
Some in cages for people to see
Some are plastic, of course,
Like the odd “Jesus horse”
You can ride on (just children!) for free
With the tour guide explaining
It soon will start raining—
It’s best that we get through the doors
And with thunder and lightning
More piped-in than frightening
The skies open up, and it pours
It isn’t surprising
The water starts rising
With rivers obscuring the ground
We’re on board! We’re the winners!
We laugh at the sinners
Outside, who are there to be drowned.
Some electrical junction
Is bound to malfunction;
The waters continue to rise—
Now it’s panic and screaming
(Please tell me we’re dreaming!)
On board, we can hear all the cries
Now the water is rushing,
The pipes are still gushing,
We realize, we’re really afloat!
Like the Genesis story
We share in the glory
And ride in the biblical boat
Though it’s ill-built and creaky,
Substantially leaky,
We ought to be fine for a while
And although we’re all stuck
We rejoice in our luck
And we look at each other and smile.
Soon the still-rising tides
Means the screaming subsides
From the folks who did not get on board
And we know that God willed
That these people be killed
So we all praise the works of Our Lord
As the day turns to night
With no rescue in sight
Our exhaustion will drive us to sleep
Though the children are wary
Cos darkness is scary
And the lions are eating the sheep
So we all sleep in shifts
As our giant bed drifts
And there’s still not a star in the sky
Soon the sun will arrive
And we’re mostly alive
And if not, then God wants us to die.
At the whim of the weather
We huddle together
As carnivores roam through the decks
And we learned within hours
The stench overpowers—
Of feces, of death, and of sex
When the rain finally ceases
We pick up the pieces
And head to the top deck, for sun,
Where the clean-smelling breezes
Sweep by (thank you Jesus!)
And we kneel down and pray, every one!
As we float, we survey
The remains of the day
From our vantage above, on the ark
Where our neighbors and friends
Met their untimely ends
With the visitors there at the park
And we bow heads, and praise
God’s mysterious ways—
Our friends’ bodies have now begun bloating
And as plump as you please
They rise up through the seas
All disfigured and blue, they are floating
All the husbands and wives,
Little children whose lives
Were destroyed by their callous Creator
While we’re safe on the ark
Cos we chose to embark
A bit sooner, and not a bit later
There was water to drink
But it’s starting to stink
And starvation’s its own form of hell
But the hunger and thirst
Isn’t even the worst—
More than that, is the horrible smell
The miasma which flows
Though you cover your nose
Overwhelms you, and just never ends
And the worst of it all
This olfactory pall
Is the smell of our neighbors and friends
We float day after day
As around us, decay
And disease take a toll on our minds;
And our bodies grow weak
As around us, unspeak-
able horrors are all that one finds
In the decks down below
Where we never dare go
There is carnage like never before;
Most the mammals are gone
But the beetles live on
As they feast on the filth and the gore
There are maggots and flies
Which is no great surprise
In the dung and the foul, rancid meat
But up top, it is grim
Cos the pickings are slim
And there’s nothing for humans to eat
If we haven’t quite died
When the waters subside
We’ll praise God, and we won’t think to sue
Sure, it’s horribly cruel
But we learned, at home school
That what’s right is what Yahweh would do
Weird Bug Lady says
I love pretty much everything you've written, and this is one of my favorites! You can really let your imagination run with it.
Benjamin Franklin says
I was just listening to Bob Dylan's "Talkin Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Disaster Blues", and I linked from Pharyngula to read your poem.Well done, sir!Now, it don’t seem to me quite so funnyWhat some people are gonna do for moneyThere’s a bran’ new gimmick every dayJust t’ take somebody’s money awayI think we oughta take some o’ these peopleAnd put ’em on a boat, send ’em up to Bear Mountain . . .For a picnic
entropy says
That is just so awesome, if a little morbid. (Which I can mesh with just fine.)May I ask what is up with the possessive s?
Cuttlefish says
in the first verse, entropy? Tried it both ways, and both look wrong, since neither "dino" nor "hellifino" are actually words, themselves. I'm certainly not attached to the apostrophes.Dr. Franklin–bears, and picnics? Did you see "bears repeating", posted last month or so?And thanks, WBL!
Draken says
I read it out loud to myself. Someone should try to do so on the next atheist convention, after two glasses of wine. Works marvellously.Thanks, Cuttlefish.
entropy says
Yeah, I sort of thought about that later. Like 'n for "and" or whatnot.I'm also willing to grant poetry quite a bit of license, and your poetry, extreme license if need be (not that I'd ever even thought about it before) because it rocks.Cheers!
Mommet says
Brilliant, as always …
chigau (違う) says
Still good.