by Alex Steelsmith
“Russia’s COVID-19 deaths set daily record… while the the total number of coronavirus infections
…in the country has topped 9 million.”
—Associated Press
“Ukraine says Russia has nearly 100,000 troops near its border.”
—Reuters
Doubledy troubledy
Eastern Ukrainians,
fearing what Putin is
likely to do,
scramble to bolster their
armamentaria
and, while they’re at it, their
armaments too.
by Julia Griffin
A long way after Tennyson
My discontent is off the scale,
As even I’m aware;
I doubt I’d see the Holy Grail,
And less I could not care.
I cannot sleep, I hate to work—
A feeling, I might add,
That might have wiped the righteous smirk
Off good Sir Galahad.
Without a charger (sad to state),
I’m stranded, once again,
With essays bound to aggravate
Far worse than Agravaine,
So brandishing my good red pen,
I slash and underscore!
I’m stroppy as a dampened hen,
Because my arm is sore.
by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons
“Police will not investigate cash-for-peerages allegations against Tories”
—Independent
Cough up ten grand, back in Lloyd George’s day,
And you’d be “Sir”—’twas fifty grand for “Lord.”
Shell thirty grand out, and your “Sir” would stay
Hereditary for your son’s reward …
Fast-forward to the present day: new laws
On honours now forbid their sale, and yet
Rich donors to the Tory party cause
Have confidence three million pounds will net
One peerage. Though it sounds a bit like graft,
No cop can prove it’s not a legal kind
Of practice in the politician’s craft,
UK-style … So historians will find
Reform has failed to change how “Lord” is sold—
Save now the price has risen sixtyfold!
by Ruth S. Baker
“China: Man banned from all-you-can-eat BBQ for eating too much
Mr Kang said the restaurant is ‘discriminatory’ against people who can eat a lot.
‘I can eat a lot—is that a fault?’ he said, adding that he didn’t waste any of the food.
But the restaurant owner told the same reporter that Mr Kang was putting him out of pocket. …
‘Even when he drinks soy milk, he can drink 20 or 30 bottles. When he eats the pork trotters,
he consumes the whole tray of them. And for prawns, usually people use tongs to pick them up,
he uses a tray to take them all.'”
—BBC News
Pork trotters on the menu? Yes!
I’ll have—three kilograms, I guess.
Prawns? Excellent! Let’s take a tray
And load it up. Saves time that way:
Why fuss with little tongs when you
Have half a tank to bulldoze through?
Ooh, soy milk bottles!—I’ll have twenty.
I do appreciate this plenty,
So why on earth have I been banned?
I do not waste, nor understand:
Why should this miser whine and cringe
To see me on my merry binge?
I eat a lot—is that a fault?
Discrimination! Pass the salt.
by Stephen Gold
“Claim: U.S. President Joe Biden farted while meeting with the Duchess
of Cornwall [at COP26 in Glasgow].
Rating: Unproven”
—Snopes
(with apologies to Bob Dylan)
How many farts must a POTUS suppress,
Before he can let one fly free?
How many toots? Can you hazard a guess?
Is it one, is it two, is it three?
And how do we know that it flew out of Joe,
As he squawked, “Who did that? Wasn’t me!”
The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind,
The answer is blowing in the wind.
by Geoffrey Basking
“Steve Scalise, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, said last week that …
‘carbon emissions have been around from when before man walked the Earth …
the idea that hurricanes or wildfires were caused in just the last few years is just fallacy.'”
—The Guardian
“This scam,” said Scalise, “is a scandal:
A hurricane’s easy to handle!
What’s carbon emission?
A normal condition
Since man first stepped out with a candle.”
by Dan Campion
“The U.S. and China announce surprise climate agreement at COP26 summit”
—NPR
Friends, let’s surprise the climate!
Let’s show we really care,
Although we tend to slime it
And foul both sea and air.
The world’s expression’s priceless
As we exclaim, “Surprise!”
Though icecaps tip toward iceless
And ocean levels rise.
The climate, far more gracious,
Won’t stand outside the door
But enter in and thank us,
While hinting we do more.
by Julia Griffin
“Rare ‘cotton candy lobster’ … rescue[d] by Maine fisherman”
—The Guardian
My Candy-Colored Lobster,
Pursued by every mobster
And bounty-hunting robster:
What obstacles she’s faced:
No soup-and-salad jobster
Or boil-upon-the-hobster
Is she, my heart’s own throbster,
So exquisite of taste!
I am no snoozy slobster,
No unambitious blobster:
I’ll lobby for my Lobster
All decapods above,
Because she is my lodestar,
My indigo-and-woad-star,
My worthy-of-an-ode-star,
My lustrous Lobster Love!
by Chris O’Carroll
Again she’s been fined for not wearing a mask.
She’s Marjorie Greene, of course. Why would you ask?
Fine after fine, she continues rebating
The money we pay her for not legislating.
Where Trump dodges taxes, she takes up the slack.
A few more offenses, we’ll be in the black.
by Ruth S. Baker
“Girl, 6, With ‘Heavy Menstrual Bleeding’ After COVID Vaccine Was Actually 41”
—Newsweek
A menstruating girl of six
Is proof of Fauci’s sneaky tricks:
Just see what vaccination’s done!
But now it seems she’s forty-one.
It’s moot how much these numbers mean:
I’m rather gray for seventeen;
By contrast, as it seems to me,
I’m learnèd for the age of three.
My health and wellness correlate
With what you’d hope at sixty-eight;
For eighty-four I’m looking fine!
(Admittedly, I’m fifty-nine).
by Steven Kent
“N.F.L. Fines Aaron Rodgers, Packers for Covid-19 Protocol Violations”
—The New York Times
Vaccinate, schmaccinate,
A. Rodgers, quarterback
Faked on a vax play—he’s
Nobody’s mensch.
N.F.L. defense then
Unsympathetically
Shut down his offense with
Fines and the bench.
by Pat D’Amico
An old lady seeks out a booster
Cause the CDC constantly goosed her,
So she calls up the regional spots
In charge of dispensing the shots.
They all say that’s perfectly fine,
But first you must journey online.
She enters the hideous web
Where reason can trickle and ebb.
Then she’s pointing and clicking away,
Which swallows the bulk of the day.
Appointments, she finds, always tend
To result in a woeful dead end.
by Clyde Always
Some cook’s been shaken to the core—
a dozen wings he fried
went on to be the motive for
attempted patricide!
by Nora Jay
Donald Trump once described Mitch McConnell as his ‘ace in the hole’ …
in a foreword to [McConnell’s] autobiography …
[But] speaking to the Washington Post … Trump said he told McConnell:
“‘Why don’t you write it for me and I’ll put it in, Mitch?’ Because that’s the way life works.”
—The Guardian
A blurb by TRUMP! You made your pitch;
I classed it with the perks
You earned when Garland hit the ditch;
But those were different circs,
And non-self-praise is something which
I grudge to two-faced jerks;
So now I say you wrote it, Mitch,
’Cause that’s how my life works.
by Paul Lander
Texas is so bad
The Lone Star State now stands for
Its review on Yelp.