The Don believes that he should win
A Nobel Prize, or five or six.
In Physics, he has shown that spin,
When issued from a looney bin,
Can pulverize our politics.
In Chemistry, he’s proved that air
Can hold more carbon than we thought.
In Medicine, the wear-and-tear
He’s heaped upon Obamacare
Gives private plans a booster shot.
In Economics, he has shone,
Imposing tariffs left and right
For reasons only he alone
Can fathom (if he has a bone
To pick, you’re in his line of sight).
In Literature, no one alive
Or dead and in his grave competes
In volume or in hyperdrive
With Prexy Number Forty-five
When he taps out his fearsome tweets.
The Peace Prize looms just out of reach.
He’s asked dear Vladimir to dance,
And they’ve found novel ways to breach
Time-honored protocols; impeach
The Don, and peace will stand a chance.
She married a doctor who paid all the bills
and they settled in England’s impeccable hills.
Her bushes were trimmed and her borders pristine,
she was quite the big deal on the tea party scene
where she wowed with her baking advice,
did Juniper Bilberry-Bryce.
She read all the papers the dear doctor bought—
it was so much more simple than forming a thought.
“The country’s in chaos!” they told her. “It’s time
to slash immigration! To crack down on crime!”
“These mean streets have never been meaner,”
she said to her Latvian cleaner.
Now, meanwhile, in London, a leader arose
whom the editors feted with toadying prose.
He promised the people a piece of the pie
as he dined with the damned and the succubi.
“I hear that he’s awfully nice,”
said Juniper Bilberry-Bryce.
He doubled the army and armed the police,
he sold off the forests for five pounds a piece,
he schooled the achievers, excluded the rest
and the papers declared he was simply the best!
But then, from the earth and the skies,
his sponsors appeared for their prize.
As the hellmouth spilled over with demons and brutes
who trampled all over her runner-bean shoots,
thought Juniper, “What would the editors say?”
So she picked up a pitchfork, joined in the fray,
and sent England to hell in a trice,
did Juniper Bilberry-Bryce.
“We had twenty mountain climbers. That’s all they do—they love to climb mountains. They can have it. Me, I don’t want to climb mountains. But they’re very good, and some of them were champions. And we gave them different prototypes of walls, and this was the one that was hardest to climb.”—Donald Trump, Leader of the Free World
When twenty climbers went to test
My wall, one section proved the best;
This was the prototype I chose,
The one that snookered alpine pros.
My message here is crystal clear:
Only the most skilled mountaineer
Can scale my wall’s imposing face,
My tribute to the master race.
(If you believe this latest tale
You’ll love the bridge I have for sale.)
“Author Simon Hewitt has unearthed a little-studied image held in Germany, a “comic strip” design made in 1495 to illustrate a poem, that showed how Leonardo was once ridiculed. In one of its colourful images, An Allegory of Justice, a ginger-haired … court lawyer is shown seated at a desk, mesmerised by other young men, and represents Leonardo da Vinci. ‘The identity of Leonardo as the red-headed scribe is totally new,’ Hewitt told the Observer…” —The Guardian
Does everybody know the star from Vinci,
The naughty genius with the Judas hair—
The one whose face is sort of puffed and pinchy?
I found him in a comic strip. So there.
I spied him scrawling rubbish on a table,
Too stunned with lust to regulate his pen;
Meanwhile his father stuck him with a label
About his taste for better-looking men.
Who says he doesn’t look exactly lustful?
Who says the label might be just a text
To copy, and that no one seems distrustful
Around a court-recorder over-sexed,
And steamy as the quattrocento sewers?
His ginger hair revealed it at first sight!
They all look ginger? Maybe, to mere viewers;
But not to learned clerks with books to write.
“Neutrino Experiment Reveals (Again) That Something Is Missing from Our Universe” —LiveScience.com
“Again” is right. Those books we loaned,
The dollars we have spent
On fruitless efforts to look toned,
On vino, and on rent
(Plus keys that simply disappeared)
All obviate the need
To show once more the world’s not geared
To keep our stuff. Indeed,
Evaporation is the rule:
Experiments go poof!
Hard facts and paradigms unspool . . .
Why seek for further proof?
“Pope Francis has taken aim at adjectives while giving his views on language to the Vatican communications team, saying: ‘I am allergic to those words’. … [T]he pope took particular aim at the word ‘authentic,’ especially when describing ‘authentic Christians’. ‘We have fallen into the culture of adjectives and adverbs, and we have forgotten the strength of nouns … Why say authentically Christian? It is Christian!’” —The Guardian
With all the sins the Pope forgives,
He draws the line at adjectives.
The faithful must endure his frowns
If they contaminate their nouns
With fillers like “authentic,” which
Provokes a papal rash, or itch.
“Why add,” he scolds the Vatican,
“‘Authentic’ to plain ‘Christian’?
We have forgotten more is less!
We’ve fallen,” snaps His [- – – -]ness.
In a French cuisine till lately hung an icon (Christ on gold)
Which has just been viewed and valued and is shortly to be sold.
Long it watched its aged owner stir ragout and tend the grill;
Now it’s locked inside a showroom, dollar-priced at seven mill.
Kitchens now from Tarbes to Arras are sustaining piercing looks.
What a gain for art and beauty! What a turn-up for the cooks!
Cuisiniers and cognoscenti are bilaterally rocked
To conceive above a hotplate Cimabue’s “Jesus Mocked.”
On his faded golden background Christ is standing in a scrum:
Nineteen strangers, arms extended, mark Him out for martyrdom.
Still, it seems a lot of silver. Will this sell for seven mill?
With allowance for inflation, very probably it will.
“To mark the release of the Downton Abbey film, the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon have posted their residence of Highclere Castle in Hampshire on the Airbnb booking website.” —The Guardian
[Contains TV series spoilers]
Good But Not Great. The house was nice,
But not enough to do it twice.
The family was strange. The Earl
Seemed pleasant, and the youngest girl,
But Carson squirmed while serving food,
And Lady Mary acted rude.
Of course, we half expected that,
But not some Turkish diplomat
Finishing up in madam’s bed—
Not just embarrassing but dead.
Enough excitement, so you’d hope!
Then Lady Grantham slipped on soap.
As for old Lady G—the sneer
When Wayne (my husband) asked for beer!
And how she smirked when, over tea,
That nasty footman squeezed his knee!
Still, we liked Mrs. Isobel
(Not Downton class, though—you can tell)
And Mrs. Patmore did her best
With Bolonaise, at our request.
Were there some things we’d change? There were.
We found him pushy, their chauffeur:
He outright whizzed us down that drive!
Overall rating: 3.5.
