[Newspoetry] Werd in Florida

[William Gillespie]

Johnny Werd and the Revolution in Florida

Werd knew he would have to flee Miami, and he knew somehow his destiny
lay south. Even though he left his books in New York, he was worried
about Castro. Werd was eating Ramen noodles when he heard on NPR that
Castro had fainted during a speech. Werd choked, and noodles flew
everywhere. And he thought about vectors and how he could render the
flight of the noodles in ASCII. Tildes. Lots of tildes.

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Following the intuitions of Johnny Werd, Florida seceded from the
nation. After a vicious struggle which culminated in Miami, when that
other Bush kid boarded a Lear jet and fled to Texas. Florida's chief
exports were mosquitos, sand, brief but vicious thunderstorms,
alligators, coconuts, key lime pie, and alternative rock music. After
the embargo was imposed by president - er, ah, I'm totally blanking on
the name, geez I knew it a second ago -  well, after the embargo was
imposed by the president of the United States, then it became necessary
for Johnny Werd to travel the world with his associate Komninos Zervos,
the world's leading mosquito economist, to establish cordial relations
with other countries. Their misadventures in the various capital letters
of the second and third persons are documented elsewhere.

After Werd's agrarian reform, many rich people had to flee Miami, which
really pissed them off, since many of them had already had to flee Cuba.
Still, according to the letter of Werd's law, all their fabulous parties
in mansions on the beach with tigers in cages and bowls of cocaine would
now be given to the people, the people of Florida, those flawed people,
delirious from the heat, hypersexual and violently criminal, whose
prostitutes' billboards were crawling with lizards and peeling in the
tropical heat. So the rich fled to Atlanta, and had new parties, but were 
bitter.

Jeb Bush would issue denunciations on national TV from one of his
parents' lawns where he was golfing in exile, but Werd had prevailed:
Florida became a free state.


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