by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons
“It was the moment when millions of football fans held their breath.
England’s place in the Euro 2024 semi-finals had come down to a penalty shootout against Switzerland.
People watched at home, in pubs and in… London’s Old Vic Theatre.
James Corden’s play, The Constituent, was due to start at the same time… as the penalties.
But instead of ploughing on with the show, Corden went on stage and watched the sporting drama
with the audience and his fellow cast members.”
—BBC
Must I stop watching England play, and act?
Until I know the outcome of events,
Should I pretend my gut is not intact,
Then watch in hiding in the nearest gents?
My play and spot kicks both at once begin,
Yet I would rather be in Dusseldorf,
Soliloquizing on an England win.
How well this giant shoot-out goes will dwarf
Old Vic proceedings—must my show go on,
Without delay? What do my patrons say? …
Glued firmly to a spot-kick marathon
On smartphones, all are saying: Halt the play
Onstage—right now, the highest drama’s found
Not here, but on a German football ground!
by Steven Urquhart Bell
“Drinking this much water a day can help you lose weight, dietician says”
—Daily Express
Constantly sipping water through the day is
The secret to a slimmer, fitter you—
It fills you up and stops you overeating,
Because you’re always running for the loo.
by Dan Campion
“High-altitude cave used by Tibetan Buddhists yields a Denisovan fossil”
—ArsTechnica
Some ancient ancestors endured
A hundred thousand years
Of harsh cave life. I’m strangely stirred.
Their stamina endears.
That Buddhist monks succeeded them
Augments the cosmic saga.
We just might find a stratagem
For holding on past MAGA.
by Philip Kitcher
Alas, Keir Starmer
is not a charmer,
but next to Rishi
he counts as dishy.
by Steven Kent
“Michael Jackson was more than $500M in debt when he died in 2009”
—The Guardian
Bubbles’ friend, trouble’s friend:
MJ, late King of Pop,
Earned a celebrity
Nobody had
Dancing and singing so
Cynosuristically.
Managing money, though?
Michael was Bad.
by Julia Griffin
“Fossil of Neanderthal child with Down’s syndrome hints at early humans’ compassion
Skull anatomy shows the boy or girl would have been severely disabled, yet survived until the age of six”
—The Guardian
They were our infancy. They died quite young:
Their lives were painful, as our own would be
Without the legacies we thrive among.
Their ordinary rate of injury
To us looks catastrophic. We assume,
Between all this and long, non-globose brains,
That they were lacking every kind of room
For finer feelings: for the joys and pains
Of kindly love. A much-disabled child;
To waste on this the strength required to care
For other offspring, fit to face the wild:
The cold, the dark, the hunger of the bear?
It must have been impossible, all told!
And yet this child survived to six years old.
by Chris O’Carroll
You say I cooked and ate a dog? You lie!
I deny it. I’m in shock about it.
You say I did a sexual assault?
I’m no church boy. Let’s not talk about it.
by Steven Kent
“‘You’re the sucker, you’re the loser’: 90 miserable minutes of Biden v. Trump”
—The Guardian
If I were to devise a drinking game,
We’d take another shot with each new claim
From candidates who lie or change their tune,
Though clearly we’d be very drunk too soon
And miss debate, perhaps, that weirdly wraps
With flaps regarding golfing handicaps.
by Ellen Hawley McWhirter
(With apologies to the Everly Brothers)
Buy buy gifts!
Buy buy influence!
Six-to-three, it’s a cinch.
And now it’s not a bribe!
Buy buy more gifts, buy buy!
Let’s give them vacays, let’s give them cash,
Expensive dinners, a birthday bash.
They’ll do our bidding, it’s like a dream.
We’ll court their favor, oh how supreme!
Buy buy jewels!
Bibles in public schools
We’ll change all the rules.
There’s nothing we can’t try!
Buy buy more gifts, buy buy!
No more obstruction, you’re free to go.
No women’s healthcare, Wade conquered Roe,
Mugshots are trending, and just you wait!
A few more months and we’ll make things great!
Buy buy gifts!
Buy buy influence!
Six-to-three, it’s a cinch.
And now it’s not a bribe!
Buy buy more gifts, buy buy!
by Julia Griffin
“Mysterious shiny monolith removed from Nevada desert…
“MYSTERIOUS MONOLITH!” a police department post on X said.”
—The Guardian
Hurrah for the shining, itinerant post,
The Monolith, ever mysterious,
Appearing wherever we thirst for it most
(And thirst in Nevada is serious).
Three cheers for the eerie one, mirroring back
The loneliest spots you can grab it at,
In Spain, Wales, Romania (who can keep track?)—
But desert’s its natural habitat.
We’re told that it’s plural—believe if you choose;
We’re told it’s manmade—is that probable?
Of course it’s the line the conventional news
Fobs anyone off with who’s fobbable;
But when you’ve considered its sheerness and sheen,
The luck you’ll require to achieve a view,
The fact its arrivals have never been seen—
You’ll find those beliefs quite naïve of you;
And though I concede that there isn’t a word
That offers a rhyme for or on or with,
I’ll say it again—let the echo be heard:
All hail, the Mysterious Monolith!
by Steven Urquhart Bell
“MP candidates give view on assisted dying at election hustings.”
—Southern Daily Echo
You can’t let people give in to despair.
Wait for the vote—don’t do it then and there.
by Nora Jay
“Rishi Sunak is facing a growing clamour to come clean about the betting scandal engulfing Westminster …
[T]he prime minister was urged to get a grip on the drip-drip of revelations.”
—The Guardian
(After Cole Porter)
Like the drip-drip-drip of the talk-talk
As the polling numbers fall;
Like the tee-tee-hee of the BBC
As the Starmerati maul;
Like the tut-tut-tut of the party
With the case on public view,
The voice of Rishi keeps repeating “Boo, boo, boo!”—
Day and night, why is it so
That the party Whip keeps calling me up to say “Go!”
When the only thing I did
Was bet a trifling hundred quid
About a day—
One, OK?
Night and day, tempers are high,
As the temperature is likely to be in July;
Which is also when we’ll set
The date for our Election Day, you can bet—
So you see,
Why not me?
by Ruth S. Baker
“Eight-year-old pekingese Wild Thang wins World’s Ugliest Dog contest”
—The Guardian
A dog, with anomalous legs or skin,
Unseen by an orthodontist,
Has just won something which ought to win
World’s Ugliest Contest Contest.
by Dan Campion
“NASA Advances Research to Grow Habitats in Space from Fungi”
—NASA
One day the earthbound homeless may
Gaze skyward on clear nights
And know that on some Martian bay
Space tourists see the sights
And Moon-based colonists sleep snug
In cozy mushroom huts.
Earth gravity at work, they’ll shrug,
Aware this world is nuts.
by Bruce Bennett
A marble statue of the Roman Goddess of Wisdom “that greeted students at Wells College
for more than 150 years was accidentally decapitated in the scramble to close the institution
forever… an unavoidable metaphor for the angst surrounding the institution’s sudden closure.”
—The New York Times
A Lady is missing her head.
You’d think she’d be mercifully dead.
But no, She’s alive
and mad as a hive
of hornets, so you should feel Dread!
