by Dan Campion
“Chemists Have Just Tied The Tightest Knot Ever, Made of Just 54 Atoms”
—ScienceAlert
The latest news in chemistry
Brings Boy Scout knots straight back to me.
Though Brobdignagian in size,
The trusty Boy Scout square knot ties
Most things, and for what gaps there are
Scouts have a hefty repertoire
Of bowlines, hitches, and sheepshanks.
Dear chemists, for these memories: Thanks!
Your microscopic knot, drawn tight,
Unloosed free ends long lost to sight.
by Simon MacCulloch
“Towns in England with crumbling water infrastructure are being ‘besieged’ by hundreds of trucks full of sewage.”
—i
Now the pipelines have started to fray
I expect we shall soon see the day
When we do what we do
In a travelling loo
And the garbage truck tows it away.
by Alex Steelsmith
“Patrick Mahomes’ broken helmet ‘did its job’ [the manufacturer says.
When the helmets clashed] a fist-sized chunk went flying from Mahomes’ helmet
just above the facemask… ‘It’s something that’s cool,’ [he said…] ‘I was perfectly fine after.’”
—NBC News
Crackily, whackily,
helmet technology
clearly succeeds when it
fails, say reports.
Though it seems logically
self-contradictory,
surely the news is a
breakthrough of sorts.
by Marshall Begel
“A message beamed into space invites aliens to visit Lexington, Kentucky”
—The Washington Post
Attention, all alien tourists of space:
Let Lexington be your terrestrial base!
You’ll cut fancy circles on golf’s premier courses
And probe the behinds of award-winning horses.
To meet with our leaders or plan an invasion,
Our conference center hosts any occasion.
So whether your business is world-wide destruction
Or merely a casual beam-up abduction,
You’ll thank your home stars for becoming so lucky
You landed your saucer in scenic Kentucky!
by Julia Griffin
For Sophie—and all the other cat women in my life
“It’s Larry the Cat’s Seventeenth Birthday”
—YouTube
Downing Street, associated
Usually with poorly-rated
Statesmen blathering or snarling,
Fêtes this week its feline darling:
Larry, prince of impassivity,
Marks his seventeenth nativity.
Since age three (so most consider),
He has served as rodent-ridder;
Civil to our budget-wrecker
Chancellor of the Exchequer;
Stepping past policemen neatly;
Checking up, but most discreetly,
On the resident Prime Minister,
Howsoever dumb or sinister,
Slick or slacker, bland or blust’rous,
Lettuce-like or still less lustrous.
Five of them he’s duly greeted,
Four seen slope away, defeated;
Though they fill his bowl, or flavor it,
Never has he owned a favorite.
Larry, model politician,
Credit to your high position!
By your admirable labors,
You have made, for all your neighbors
And myself, mere out-of-towner,
Downing Street a lesser downer.
by Alex Steelsmith
“Hertz is selling 20,000 electric vehicles to buy gasoline cars…
[EVs] have been hurting Hertz’s financials… Hertz expects to take a loss
of about $245 million due to depreciation on the EVs…”
—CNN
Fillable, fuelable
gas-powered vehicles
bolster financials, a
spokesman asserts;
EVs are harming their
profitability.
Who can be faulted? The
company hurtz.
Fiscally riskily,
EVs as rental cars
sometimes depreciate,
analysts learn.
Now it appears that the
company’s managers
underappreciate
them in return.
by Simon MacCulloch
“Brits left baffled by Brexit’s ‘not for EU’ food labels.”
—Politico
We’re compelled to dismiss all these labels
As babble in bureaucrats’ Babels
For if “Not for EU”
Translates “Not for me/you”
We’ll be dining at very bare tables.
by Steven Kent
“Do You Have ‘Bookshelf Wealth’? A TikTok Home Décor Trend Has Irked Some Bibliophiles”
—The New York Times
My look is lived-in, always understated:
A vase, a painting, placed with utmost care.
The books, of course, have all been hand-curated,
With no pulp fiction titles anywhere.
There’s Huck Finn, Moby Dick (about a sailor),
The works of Shakespeare, Steinbeck for my friends,
And also Roth and Updike, Irving, Mailer,
Plus Zadie Smith to show I’m up on trends.
A paperback looks cheap, in my opinion;
Collector sets add class here to my shelf,
Projecting airs of scholarly dominion
(Though I flunked out of English Lit myself).
I choose them by the lovely leather binding;
I’m keenly conscious of each luscious hue
Which color-matches. I don’t need reminding
That books are there to read, you pedant, you!
by Barbara Lydecker Crane
“Respiratory illnesses elevated in 38 states, according to CDC”
—ABC News
The forecaster’s under the weather;
the gardener sleeps like a slug.
Dentists aren’t pulling together,
and techies have picked up the bug.
House painters are shaking with chills
while putting on multiple coats.
The druggists are acting like pills—
They’re all at each other’s damn throats.
Electricians are currently ill;
the nose of the plumber is dripping.
The waitress keeps serving until
her customers tell her she’s tipping.
Salesmen are out of commission,
and oilmen, too, are unwell.
The yogi, in supine position,
discovers nirvana is hell.
The writer is healthy, no sweat,
but still she’s a bit of a chicken.
She’s not in the soup—or grave—yet
she knows that a plot’s apt to thicken.
by Dan Campion
“Peter Schickele, Composer and Gleeful Sire of P.D.Q. Bach, Dies at 88”
—The New York Times
Farewell, dear Peter Schickele,
The “Sire of P.D.Q.,”
That trickster Bach who, prickly,
Was almost good as you,
But, in a way, your nemesis
(Four Grammys to your one)
For philharmonic emphasis
On cockamamie fun.
by Alex Steelsmith
“A passenger hid bullets in a baby diaper at New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
TSA officers caught him.”
—AP
“A typical sniper would not use a diaper,
but I am ingenious,” he gloated.
“My thinking is clever; officials will never
check diapers that someone has loaded.”
However, they caught him and pointedly taught him
a lesson regarding his stash:
“When looking for camo to cover your ammo,
your choice of a diaper was rash.”
by Paul Lander
Think AI’s smart now?
Wait ‘til it turns down hosting
The next Golden Globes.
by Dan Campion
“Tornadoes, Blizzards, Floods: Severe Storms Hit Vast Sections of U.S.”
—The New York Times
I shoveled snow twice yesterday,
And then again this morning.
Amazing how much snowflakes weigh
When locust-like and swarming.
They brought down branches from my trees.
They’ve made my shoulders sore,
And put cricks in my back and knees.
Plus, shoveling’s a bore.
The news, however, says much worse
Befell my fellows coast to coast.
I’ve suffered, then, no private curse.
Do I feel better now? Almost.
by Julia Griffin
For Siôn
“Mouse secretly filmed tidying man’s shed every night”
—The Guardian
A mouse set a shed that was sloppy right,
Thus driving all YouTube berserk.
’Twas Mickey. Since losing his copyright,
He needs the work.