“The Mitchell County Animal Rescue in North Carolina posted an adoption ad on Facebook that introduced the world to Perdita, the ”World’s Worst Cat.’ ‘We thought she was sick,’ the ad said. ‘Turns out she’s just a jerk.'” —CNN
HOME WANTED for a piece of work:
A veritable feline jerk.
Believe she’s sick? Believe again:
She’s just a claw-deploying pain,
Whose one idea of a lark
Is spreading bitterness and dark.
She is not spayed, but never fear:
No other cat would dare come near;
She’s had her shots, but you know what?
You’ll quickly wish that she had not.
Likes: pricey foods (each one just once);
Emitting bored, sarcastic grunts;
Biting and scratching; raising welts.
Hates: pleasing anybody else;
Togetherness of any sort;
Affection; courtesy; in short
All kinds of human contact save
The kind that means an early grave.
With most adoptions, we prefer
A trial run, but not with her;
The bottom line: this toxic cat
Once yours is yours, and that is that.
This is the form, if you insist.
It names a vet, and exorcist.
What’s the use of wond’ring
if he’s evil or deranged,
or if you find his tweets and morals crass?
Oh, what’s the use of wond’ring
if he’ll blow the world to bits? He’s their fellow and they’ll keep on
pretending he’s no ass.
Common sense may tell you
that the ending will be sad,
unless his party’s hiding honest souls.
But what’s the use of wond’ring
if there’s honor among thieves?
Nothing scares them like their leader,
except the latest polls.
Something made Trump the way that he is,
Big Macs or genes or drugs.
And something lets him keep what is his—
A base with a taste for thugs.
He calls all children “sacred,”
while he starves and cages some,
but nothing seems to make the Senate balk.
His bribes, assaults and treason,
they keep covering up like mad.
He’s their fellow and they need him,
so all the rest is talk.
Common sense may tell you
that the ending will be sad,
unless Trump’s party crashes at the polls.
But what’s the use of wond’ring
if we’ll end the nightmare soon?
Wily Fox chews truth to pieces,
with help from Russian trolls.
“Etienne Naude, 19, placed a slice of white bread on the ground at Bucklands Beach in Auckland, using longitude and latitude to ensure he was precisely opposite a volunteer he had found in the south of Spain after posting for help on Reddit. The two men—total strangers—had 12,724km of earth between them, creating an ‘earth sandwich’.” —The Guardian
Two strangers, mapping out its girth,
Have made a sandwich of the earth.
In Bucklands Beach and southern Spain,
They framed the whole terrene terrain,
Encompassing a lavish heap
8,000 miles (or almost) deep
Of dusty mantle, rocks ablaze,
O2, Fe, and mayonnaise.
Two well-positioned satellites
Observed this heartiest of bites,
And YouTube’s now put all on show:
The least exclusive club we know.
“Man requests sword fight with ex-wife and lawyer to settle legal dispute: David Ostrom, 40, of Paola, Kansas asks judge for trial by combat in 12 weeks, so he has time to secure Japanese samurai swords” —The Guardian
Divorce proceedings need not be so hard
If proper measures are secured. En garde!
In twelve weeks’ time, if UPS accords,
I shall secure two wakizashi swords,
To end this disagreement with Bridgette
Concerning custody and taxes. Pret!
Upon the field of battle, we shall rend
Our souls from these our bodies. Trust me, friend,
A mortal joust will be a holiday
Compared with lawyers’ interviews. Allez!
“Scientists use stem cells from frogs to build first living robots … The source of the cells [Xenopus laevis] led the scientists to call their creations ‘xenobots’. … [R]esearchers describe how … [s]ome crept along in straight lines, while others looped around in circles or teamed up with others as they moved around. … Thomas Douglas, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said: ‘ … difficult questions could arise about whether these xenobots should be classified as living creatures or machines.’” —The Guardian
They live ten days, if that is what they do,
Or else their batteries endure that long.
Some have two “legs.” Some have a hole, right through
Their “hearts.” Without a colony or song,
How can they have a sense of self or group?
Is it by choice they creep along the ground
In a straight line, or singly loop the loop,
Or join with others as they move around?
They are not frogs. Let’s say they simply are,
And pray they’ll clean our world and eat our waste
Before the time (let’s pray it’s very far)
When really awkward questions must be faced.
“With a funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected scent, this candle is made with geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with Damask rose and ambrette seed to put us in mind of fantasy, seduction, and a sophisticated warmth.” —Goop advertisement for “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle
Geranium and bergamot,
Sweet, sexy notes! And—hush:
Within the cedar, is there not
A little tender thrush…?
“The latest trouble at the border… U.S. Customs and Border Protection has a problem with vultures—specifically, roughly 300 of them that are defecating and urinating all over a radio tower that the agency needs to communicate.” —The Washington Post
Some troubles never go away.
But who’d have thought that birds of prey
Would join those “flouting rules and laws”
and lend their powers to the cause?
“The Government Accountability Office…, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, said … that the White House [Office of Management and Budget] violated the Impoundment Control Act, a 1974 law that limits the White House from withholding funds that Congress has appropriated.” —CNN
In GAO v. OMB
(A watchdog posed against grandee)
There’s either nothing here to see
(Says OMB), or else the flow
Of funds was stopped (says GAO)
Illegally. It’s either/or,
You’d think. Except we can’t ignore
The obfuscative tendency
Of present White House regency,
Where OMBs and DOJs
Fill in while their Dear Sovereign plays
At being Emperor. What law,
They’ll ask, what act? and then guffaw
Behind closed doors. But don’t despair.
A whistle-blower’s listening there.
Harry and Meghan are flying the nest!
Now they are free for the work they do best:
Diffusing their love and their fabulousness,
Without all the duties, the damp, and the Press.
Meghan and Harry are flying the coop,
Leaving the List, heading out of the loop;
And all they will ask is a homestead or ten,
For Archie, and all their security men.
“The Pentagon sent a letter saying it was withdrawing from Iraq, only to disavow it as a mistake.” —The New York Times
Hello, we must be going, friends.
No, wait, the cycle never ends.
We come, we go, we yes, we no,
We steer our course now to, now fro,
We whip our cars around your walls,
We leave gift horses in your halls,
We disappear, we reappear,
We always shed a parting tear
To salt a memoir to our taste
Before we leave again in haste.
Or not. That letter? Sent in error.
Janus is our standard-bearer.
“Young marsupials including possums, koalas and wombats require pouches to grow. Without their mothers they rely on hand-stitched products from donors. Other animals such as flying foxes also require pouches to help their recovery [from Australia’s bushfires], and rescuers say koalas need mittens for their burnt paws.” —The Guardian
I’m planning to cosset a possum,
Or knit a lost wombat a womb;
Make mittens with blossoms across ’em,
And save some koalas from doom.
Observe: from Detroit to the Netherlands,
They’re all being stitched for by turns,
As humans in grieving-together-lands
Sew wraps for marsupials’ burns.
I like to imagine a flying fox
Enjoying a hand-fashioned snood,
While Kanga’s relieved we’re supplying socks
For her and her blistery brood.
Let’s labor until there’s an over-plus
For wombat, koala, and roo:
To give them some future in spite of us,
It’s the least (and the most) we can do.
“Pence hits the campaign trail for Trump—and himself” —Politico.com
Some say the world will end with Trump.
Some say with Pence.
From studies of the vacuum pump,
I hold with those who favor Trump.
But if more voters lose all sense
and waste their precious votes again
(from bigotry or ignorance)
on Trump, then Pence,
what’s our defense?
“A newly published letter, written by TS Eliot in 1960, has shed fresh light on the writer’s relationship with a woman he corresponded with for 26 years. …
Eliot wrote hundreds of letters to Hale while he was married to his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood.
The letters were unsealed this week at Princeton University in New Jersey.
Their unsealing prompted the publication of Eliot’s letter, which he had said should only be released when his letters to Hale were made public.”
—BBC News
It has come to my ears that Miss Emily Hale
Is glossing my letters. Bad taste on this scale
Compels me to issue a record, although
I shudder to put what is private on show.
In Harvard at Graduate School, I declared
The love that Miss Hale has now vulgarly aired;
From Oxford in 1914, I addressed
Some letters where friendship alone was expressed.
The years wed to Vivienne Haigh-Wood I found
Sheer agony, but for the praises of Pound;
And yet, though the nightmare we jointly endured
Drove me to “The Waste Land,” and her to a ward,
She did let the poet inside me prevail, And saved me from marrying Emily Hale.
I saw, with poor Vivienne sadly deceased,
I was not in love with Miss Hale in the least:
That what I had taken for love was, in truth,
A memory only of love in my youth;
And it was impossible not to divine
Her deafness to verse, in particular mine.
Though maybe she loved, my opinions meant less
To her than her uncle’s, whose mind was a mess;
Although Unitarian, still she’d prefer
The Anglican rites, quite improper for her;
And lastly (insensitive, surely, and coarse)
She did not respect my beliefs on divorce.
When Vivienne died, I observed that, at most, My love was the love of a ghost for a ghost;
I hereby record this, before my decease.
We never had sex. May we all rest in peace.
