Category: satire

Dear Donald #1

January 30, 2017.Reading time 2 minutes.

Dear Donald,

I understand that you are building a wall to keep dangerous Mexicans off our soil, and you have bravely banned humans of seven scary Muslim countries from entering our great nation.

While you are busy signing executive orders to make America great again, I was wondering if you would consider the following:

1. a ban on all grasshoppers
2. a nationwide flight restriction on mosquitos, especially the kind that carry the Zika Virus
3. a prohibition on plant blight
4. a restriction on drought that covers all except the designated desert plains
5. an immediate halt to the entry in United States’ air space of any cloud even thinking of forming a tornado vortex
6. an offshore boundary prohibiting hurricanes from coming within 200 nautical miles of our fine country’s shores, or else
7. an immediate ban on all forms of cancer
8. a strict restriction on flooding in urban or agricultural districts
9. an executive order calling for the immediate halt of all traffic accidents
10. a ban on the flu virus, something that would save millions of dollars annually in vaccines alone

I can think of many other items to put on this list; but, between your ban of people from those Muslim countries and your wall to keep Mexican people out, I don’t see how there will be enough working humans left in America to complete the tasks already mentioned.

Thank you for your time.

A Concerned Citizen

~

Words and Photography ©2017 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Posted in short stories & satire. Bookmark the permalink.

 

 

The High Tower

January 11, 2017.Reading time 3 minutes.

“Let’s build the tower high again!” the newly crowned king shouted as he rode his tall steed through the kingdom’s cobblestone roads for his coronation parade.

The subjects cheered, “Rebuild the High Tower! Rebuild the High Tower!”

Stupidity echoes loudly off the walls of stopped ears.

The High Tower, symbol of the kingdom’s former glory, spiraled to a height never before achieved in any other nation. Chiseled stone on chiseled stone, long ago carried on the whipped backs of imported slaves, rose into the clouds. Along the lines of human chains each brick was painstakingly laid. The mortar mixed with blood displayed a uniquely rusty hue. The subjects of the kingdom exported the excess stones at great profit. That was long ago.

The High Tower was built among the Emerald Hills, a verdant, rolling paradise selected after the native population had been culled, its survivors driven off to desolate grounds on the outer edge of the world. Cleared of its original inhabitants, the garden variety slaves were free to dig, plant, weed and harvest an abundant and varied crop of produce, watering the ground with their sweat and tears as they toiled. The subjects of the kingdom grew fat with joy and exported the excess produce at great profit. That was long ago.

“The slaves won their freedom. The native inhabitants won the freedom to live on ‘their own lands’.” That’s what the history books read. (In truth, the slaves won the right to no longer be slaves, and the native inhabitants lost everything important to them; but, if you tell this to the now cheering subjects of the kingdom, it will fall on stopped ears, lost in the continuing reverberations of stupidity. I digress.)

The Emerald Hills rotted, first with overuse, then with neglect. Decaying foliage filled all its stagnant pools. The High Tower cracked and crumbled. The stone steps that spiraled to its peak, providing a view all the world’s kingdoms, was no longer safe to climb. The subjects were embarrassed but not enough to become stone workers or gardeners. They coveted their own sweat and blood, and labor in brick or dirt brings a meager pay. This is now.

“Let’s build the tower high again!” the newly crowned king shouted.

The subjects cheered, “Rebuild the High Tower!”

Stupidity echoes loudly.

~

Words and Photography ©2017 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Entry posted in short stories & satire. Bookmark the permalink.