Flowers

On the third of June, at a minute past two,
where once was a person, a flower now grew.

Five daisies arranged on a large outdoor stage
in front of a ten-acre pasture of sage.

In a changing room, a lily poses.
At the DMV, rows of roses.

The world was much crueler an hour ago.
I’m glad someone decided to give flowers a go.

If you aren’t interested in poems as lovely as that one bracketed by d*ck jokes, I just don’t know what to tell you. Except that you and I are not cut from the same cloth.

This is a dream.

I love Bo Burnham very dearly. (Or the idea of him, more accurately.) I always have. When I was a sh*tty preteen with a bad sense of humor, he made songs with offensive jokes. When I started getting into comedy a couple years later, he recorded his first standup special. When I was an edgy teen who felt better than everybody else, he made Zach Stone is Gonna Be Famous. More standup specials, these ones no-holds-barred brilliant, followed after. And then he made Eighth Grade, a movie so stunning and real and empathetic I could cry thinking about it, if I tried hard and also was possibly cutting an onion.

And somewhere in there he wrote this book, which, like everything else, I loved when I first found it and will love forever.

But unlike some of that early standup, this is actually objectively...wonderful.

Bottom line: I do not even like poetry. FIVE STARS.