Tag Archives: Berkeley Breathed

Why Berkeley Breathed Needs to Be Poet Laureate

12400519_1114294865267932_1943724592058662228_n

According to Wikipedia, “On July 12, 2015, Breathed posted to his Facebook page a photo with the caption ‘A return after 25 years. Feels like going home.’ The photo showed him drawing a comic strip with the title ‘Bloom County 2015,’ with Opus pictured in the first frame.” Six months later the page has more than half a million likes, in part because Breathed is back with not just on-target political satire, but also, let’s face it, sweet, naïve Opus, our favorite penguin (because yesterday was national penguin awareness day, after all). Also, since he is not limited by a newspaper’s requirements, he can use color whenever he wants, not just on Sundays.

12508702_1119333944764024_6364567554598398377_n

And when he can go from Ziggy Stardust to actual stardust, this man needs to be our Poet Laureate.

12552998_1122593967771355_1522555412812078116_n

The Donuts of Our Discontent

prune-donut

So the other day my pal, HeyLookAWriterFellow, wrote about Unfortunate Donuts and even illustrated it amusingly (he is one of my favorite contemporary artists, along with Laura Wilder, Anita Munman and Berkeley Breathed). This got me thinking about Perfect Donuts that I have eaten (all two of them) and set me up for the 7-Eleven’s 50-cent donut deal yesterday morning, which led to the glazed donut I ate half of yesterday and am finishing today, because no one should eat that much sugar in one day if there is absolutely no chocolate in it.

One of the perfect donuts was a coconut-covered jelly stick. I ate it in Cranston, Rhode Island in about 2001 or 2002. The other was an all-too-brief Starbuck’s creation, a rectangular blueberry-raspberry jelly-filled perfect balance of starch, sweet and salty goodness. Naturally, after only about two months, they stopped making them. Probably the gods complained. They just HATE it when humans create something perfect.

How do you write

a poem about a donut

you ate a decade ago,

how do you recall

the texture on your tongue, the zip

of sugary goodness, delicate

balance of salt and sweet, the color of jam

moistly melting

 

And now I have no idea how to end this….

Illustration by Mike Allegra 2016.