Mortal Archives • My Dog Errol

366 • The horror, the horror

31st December 2020 RL Comments 8 Comments

O, these horrors have grown out of hand!
May I bury my head in the sand?
Can I let it lie there
While my corpse roves elsewhere?
A solution like that would be grand,
And my readers would all understand
Why no further postings are planned …

Yes, Covid, Idiots in Office, Climate Chaos and now this. At least I made it to the end of the year as promised. Thanks for the all lovely comments, and I know people all round the world will enjoy re-reading the 366 rhymes of My Dog Errol, again and again, in celebration of a remarkable and memorable year.

Rick Lime

365 • Exile and Extinction

30th December 2020 RL Comments 1 Comment

‘There was never much call for a builder,’
Wrote the last living soul on St Kilda.
Still, that was the trade
Of my aunt, an old maid
Who was known – to the seagulls – as ‘Hilda’.

As she drowsed in her orchard one day
An avalanche swept her away:
A torrent of trash –
Plastic, glitter and ash –
From a culture in final decay.

I never met my Aunt Claudie, who was adopted before birth (both hers and mine) and never left St Kilda (an archipelago I intend never to visit). Quite how she eked a living, after 1930’s evacuation of the island (during which numerous dogs were deliberately drowned), the rhyme does not attempt to explain; as for the ‘orchard’, credulity boggles. Nevertheless it’s impossible not to feel a great sympathy for this imaginary geriatric, unable – even in the remotest isolation from the rest of humanity – to evade obliteration by the filthy forces that shape a ‘civilisation’ she never tasted.

363 • Famous Last Words

28th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A monk who had jumped from Ben Nevis
Left his suicide note in a crevice.
Hand-lettered in gold
And five hundred years old
‘Ars longa,’ it claimed, ‘vita brevis’

Illuminated lettering – such as we find in masterpieces such as The Book of Kells – was not normally used for personal communication, but in this instance the author had no choice. An ordinary hand-written message would not have been ‘ars’, so his Latin text would have been irrelevant. Likewise, of course, if the doleful memo had been discovered the following morning, ‘longa’ would not have been apposite. And if he’d simply climbed the mountain, hidden the note, then gone home to the nunnery or wherever he lived, ‘vita brevis’ would have been nonsensical. And the choice of a secure crevice to hide it in, rather than just leaving it to blow about on the mountainside, ensures that it’s not found until ‘longa’ is appropriate. All in all, then, a well-thought out farewell to a no-doubt exemplary life.

361 • Pandora’s Boxing Day

26th December 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

‘These microbes must stay in the flask!’
You begged to be given the task.
But it snowed, and you slipped
Down the steps to the crypt.
‘Will superglue mend it?’ you ask …

When tremors were rocking Qatar
My genie got out of the jar
When I bade him return
And repair his cracked urn
His answer was, ‘Ha bloody ha.’

‘Twas the day after Christmas … and we suddenly had time to try a little remembrance of things past. Back when we all assumed the pandemic was a gambit in the column-inches war. Back when we imagined rogue science might be to blame. Back when the spirit world was obviously exacting vengeance on an iniquitous civilization. But now we know better … if we do … will we predict, prepare, react better? Or have the Genies truly left the building, leaving their self-styled ‘masters’ holding the bottle (that’s ‘fiasco’ in Italian, of course) and counting the cracks?

360 • Joy to the world

25th December 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

The truth can no longer be ducked:
This planet’s NOT totally fucked
‘Cos its prime pest, its blight,
Its blind parasite
Is programmed to auto-destruct.

I have to admit I wrote my Christmas Message yesterday — not on the morning of publication as is my wont – and road-tested it on a sandwich board, front and back, walking among last-minute panic-buyers in our Regional Shopping Mall. ‘Why are you wearing a mask?’ a child challenged me. ‘I don’t want to catch the plague,’ said I. ‘Your board says it’s going to disappear of its own accord,’ countered an angry mother. Only then did I realise that ‘pest’, ‘blight’ and so on could perhaps refer to the Covid virus, as well as to the human race. Twice the Christmas Message, then! The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

354 • Boa sting

19th December 2020 RL Comments 1 Comment

Said a blustering braggart from Bingley,
‘I can swallow ten scorpions, singly,
Then twelve jalapenos
That burn like volcanoes
And still swear my tonsils aren’t tingly.’

I challenged him, ‘Chew on this pie
Packed with gunpowder, chillies, and lye.’
(And gravy so gingery
Permanent injury
Threatened his throat, by the by).

Then I watched the first slice disappear
And his silly fat face lost its sneer:
As his gums glowed red hot, his
Engorged epiglottis
Put paid to his boasting career.

Of course I concede that the above bulletin is not entirely true, and that it was not penned for publication at My Dog Errol, but rather on the ‘Readers’ Homilies’ page in our Parish Magazine. It illustrates something from the Bible, as I recall. It was rejected by the Vicar (on grounds of length, I can only assume).

352 • You are what you eat

17th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

No cannibal vegan grows fat;
Their ethical stance sees to that.
On a diet of air
You just die of despair.
Take note of this brief caveat.

Food fascism is a pernicious scourge of 21st century life. Social pressure is a bubble only if one can muster the confidence and individuality to burst it; otherwise one is likely to stack fad upon fad in hopes of cultivating peer approval. The vegan cannibal, clearly threatening nobody, ought on paper to be a popular figure; but he or she is sadly opting for a downhill path in terms of bodily prosperity. ‘Take note of this brief caveat’ indeed.

351 • Take-Away (5)

16th December 2020 RL Comments 1 Comment

Today my old dachshund, Delphine,
Dropped dead in this trendy canteen.
‘You can say au revoir
To your Michelin star,’
I said. ‘So much for Nouvelle Cuisine.’
NOW BRING ME A CHICKEN CHOW MIEN.

The human spirit is infinitely resourceful, it seems. Unwilling to succumb to the grief that typically attends the expiry of a cur, our narrator turns the event to advantage, knowing that – once the press gets hold of the story – the reputation of one more pretentious ‘fooderie’ will be irredeemably trashed. Who wants to eat their supper in some joint where canine corpses are scattered about? Or in a restaurant that welcomes living dogs, come to think of it?

349 • Take-away (4)

14th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Regarding the death of my former
Relation (the one known as Norma)
Just tell the police
She’s no longer my niece
And that was the cause of her trauma.
NOW BRING ME A VEGETABLE KORMA.

Proof, if proof were needed, that a lazy diet of convenience food can induce circular, or even Moebius, reasoning: not at all what we typically expect from a thoughtful assassin.

347 • Take-away (3)

12th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

It seems that the culprit was Carla,
Who cleaned up the funeral parlor;
Or was it Luigi,
Who wielded the squeegee
Backstage in Milan at La Scala?
NOW BRING ME A CHANA MASSALA.

If today’s bulletin is some kind of post-mortem report, it will strike most sensible readers as annoyingly non-committal. What is certain, however, is that an habitual devourer of carry-out meals runs an enhanced risk of succumbing to food-poisoning; so we should perhaps be more grateful to the Carlas and Luigis of this world, who busy themselves with janitorial hygiene that benefits each and every one of us.

338 • Assassin (2)

3rd December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The one time I served Jack the Ripper
He’d come in my shop for a kipper.
With his dagger and cloak
He seemed quite a good bloke
Till he slew a small poodle named Pippa.

Society encourages us to think badly of a serial killer, yet one recognises this shop-girl’s guilty admiration for her celebrity customer, flaunting the characteristic costume of his profession. Here Jack’s conduct, while admittedly uncivilised, is readily rationalised, inasmuch as any domesticated dog – especially the scion of so ornamental and unnatural a breed – is already Dead to Nature. Had the fish emporium chosen to host a free-range, genetically unmodified cur, the self-styled ‘Ripper’ – like any common-or-garden customer – would doubtless have been torn to pieces a good while before the completion of his intended purchase. But it’s easy to be wise after the event.

337 • Assassin

2nd December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

So I’m off, on this evening’s vendetta
(Check pistol, check map, check Lambretta).
I’ll be sure to disclose
When your name’s one of those
On my list, if that makes you feel better.

It’s not easy to imagine the feelings of a parent who finds out that his or her offspring has become a terrorist or Mafioso/Mafiosa. But it’s encouraging, in the bulletin above, to note at least one hitperson’s solicitude for an anxious ancestor. Let’s hope this is not an unique case.

336 • From our own correspondent

1st December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Still holed up, in Azerbaijan,
With two dancing girls, in a barn:
The damn paparazzi
Are all over Patsy
But Patsy is all over Sîan.

War … what is it good for? Macho glory, seedy glamour, the licentious liberation that often accompanies mortal fear? The present bulletin is unhelpful. Quite how the particular situation arose we are not informed, despite the media presence. All we are offered is some needlessly intrusive detail about a putative relationship between the two dancing girls … something which is, in all probability, being faked in order to deflect the prurient and/or predatory attentions of Our Own Correspondent.

330 • Serial Killer

25th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Gents! Should you require an abortion,
Step into my clinic with caution.
Here tools are corroded,
Procedures outmoded,
And fees tantamount to extortion.

Surely a man has little to fear from a backstreet abortionist, especially one so unsparing in his own condemnation? Yet the very existence of such a clinic throws grave shadows on the integrity of the male of the species, who is very rarely the target of the hazardous procedure for which he is about to pay.

323 • Remote

18th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

This pod is controlled from a distance:
Press button to summon assistance.
Squirt sample in funnel.
Scream ‘Help me!’ down tunnel
Till system confirms your existence.

Obviously it is sensible that machines should validate the identity of their human masters, before coming to our rescue. We should applaud the Authorities who have programmed them so assiduously in their own image.

319 • Autumn Offensive

14th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

It wasn’t much fun in the army.
The bullets and bombs didn’t scar me
But I hated the stench
From the opposite trench
Of stale sauerkraut and salami.

It is a shining privilege for the journeyman doggerelist to contribute this humble morsel to the glorious banquet already served up by the longer-established War Poets.

318 • Somme

13th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Alas for my ptarmigan, pTom
Who expired in a ptrench on the Somme.
Though he fought ptooth and claw
Through the pterrors of war
He was ptaken, at last, by a bomb.

Friday 13th traditionally flushes out people’s tales of bad luck and trouble. Our contribution here – which incidentally revisits a couple of well-received My Dog Errol themes (Pet Elegies, and Tales of the Riverbank) – also provides a worthy billet for the plague of silent Ps that has infested our escritoire in recent days.

315 • Buckstopper

10th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘Oh King! Why reproach us recruits
For such small specks of muck on our boots?’
‘Should the Kaiser detect
Such cosmetic neglect
Then I’ll be the one that he shoots.’

This morning’s bulletin – a parade-ground conversation from long, long ago – exemplifies the generous spirit evinced by great leaders of an all-but forgotten century. ‘The Buck stops here,’ would have been a pithier – yet exactly equivalent – answer from the British monarch. What joy it is, to contemplate a return to those days, when a potentate acknowledged the responsibility that goes with great privilege … and, by example, inspired the highest standards even in his lowliest subjects.

312 • Failure

7th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The night they invented Champagne
I was fighting the Fascists in Spain.
When they slipped me a slug
(Served in Franco’s own mug)
I just emptied it into a drain.

George Orwell (celebrity author of Dining Out in Paris and London) evidently drew on personal experience when commissioned to write songs for the musical Gigi; but Maurice Chevalier dismissed an early effort (fragment above) as ‘half-hearted’, and the gig was offered to Jean-Paul Sartre instead. In today’s political climate, however, we recommend the resurrection of the Orwellian text, which centres on mendacious boasts and – crucially – the cretinous, offhand actions of a failed fighter who, ultimately, knows himself unfit for anything but illusory greatness.

309 • All at sea

4th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Terrible typhoon in Tampa.
Washed right out to sea in the camper.
Weather in Florida
Couldn’t be horrider.
Lots of love, Granny and Grandpa.

A postcard, serendipitously delivered this morning, summarises the tempestuous climate back home, now that America is Great Again. How thankful I am – as an ex-pat – to be breathing a (marginally) less toxic atmosphere than my beleaguered countrymen at this time of count and counter-count, rhetoric and threatoric, and gaseous White House bombast. Is there any decent American who would not prefer, at this filthy hour, to be marooned offshore in a foundering RV that reeks of terrified Gray Nomads?

305 • Perpetraitor

31st October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Please note that your acolyte, Artie,
Is banned from our after-show party.
Act II of MacBeth
Does not call for the death
Of King Duncan by so-called ‘karate’.

Geez, Shakespeare was a dude that knew a whole lot about the darkness that can swamp a whole realm after a gracious, humane, temperate ruler gets ousted by a card-carrying psychopath. But his Scottish Play holds comfort for us all: though there was no shortage of countrymen with the means and the motive to cut him down, the tyrannical megalomaniac was eventually unseated by his own delusional self-belief.

303 • Beyond the Grave

29th October 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Though Alison Gross is a witch
She clearly has Absolute Pitch,
Screaming perfect Top Cs
At the sky and the trees
While her body lies dead in a ditch.

In many countries today the loudest voices are indeed those of the departed; their noisome legacy is routinely summarised in resonant soundbites whose catchiness masks, for many, the emptiness of their achievements.

297 • Scorpio

23rd October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Dear Scorpio: what can I say?
Catastrophe’s heading your way:
Viral mishaps,
Economic collapse.
You may want to call it a day.

Waking to a new morning, as the celestial scorpion comes into its own, I’m surely not alone in deriving great strength from the impartial counsel of the astrologer, whose infallible sagacity shines out like a beacon against the drossy darkness of science, common sense, and associated delusions.

291 • Implants

17th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

In LA, a lass named Ludmilla
Got grabbed by a giant gorilla
That bit off her head
And left her for dead
Stripped naked and strapped to a pillar

At which point a serial killer
Embalmed her in pink Polyfilla
While her carcase was whipped …
(I’m just quoting the script:
She’s been cast in a low-budget thriller).

For decades Hollywood has thriven on demeaning women, both off and on the screen. Ludmilla may seem crazy to audition for this clichéd pile of crap, but a girl has to live, no? Mind you, she could have stayed back East on daddy’s farm, dignity intact, and lived a happy and fulfilled life milking lamas, shearing wildebeests and marrying her childhood sweetheart, Sergei. But that’s not the dream our tainted Western culture implanted in her unhappy head, is it?

290 • Biopic

16th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

In this movie, a lone paratrooper,
Flying blind through a wartime pea-souper,
Comes down in the dark
Near the edge of Hyde Park
On the head of the drummer, Gene Krupa.

16 October is indeed the date that Gene Krupa died, but not in the decade, nor the manner, suggested above. As a pitch for a biopic, therefore, its chances might seem slight … though, being extremely short and requiring no set whatever, it might prove attractive to a studio with very limited cash.

283 • Gyratory care

9th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The upside-down baby of Bath
Liked to stand on his head in the hearth.
Once an hour he was turned
To ensure nothing burned.
The corpse was interred at Penarth.

Bath and Penarth lying some sixty miles apart, and in different countries, the reported choice of burial-ground seems inexplicably remote: casual readers of this brief life may suspect foul play. Note, however, that the age-at-death of the subject is not stated. We cannot, therefore, rule out the possibility that – thanks to the careful rotary management described – this obstinate individual was not roasted in infancy as first appears, but rather lived to a ripe old age, perhaps being buried in Glamorganshire after serving as a wise yet eccentric pastor until the age of (let’s say) 77. Very possibly his personal charisma was such that parishioners learnt to stand on their heads as well, the better to commune with him: after all, spiritual truths are best imparted eye-to-eye.

281 • Incompetence

7th October 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Please note: your chiropodist, Pete,
Will be shot, should he enter our street.
He made such a botch
Of repairing your watch
He sha’n’t get his hands on my feet.

It’s all-too easy to suspect across-the-board incompetence when, in fact, ineptitude has been proven in one field only. The luckless ‘Pete’ here may indeed be a jackass-of-all-trades, but what would become of US society if we took pot-shots at every bungling nincompoop who came to our attention?

279 • Ax me another

5th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

This ax I acquired near Mauritius,
A purchase both proud and propitious:
One night in the smog
It destroyed a small dog
That might have grown up to be vicious.

Here we are again with a canine spin on the timeless, and deeply tedious, sophomoric conscience-tickler, “If you could travel back to 1946, would you destroy ‘The Donald‘ as he lay puking in his gold-plated crib?” To which the only moral answer must be, “Let us set sail for ‘near Mauritius’ immediately, and acquire a job lot of these proud and propitious axes.”

273 • All night I cry

29th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I’ve not seen a sign of my spouse
Since she opted to live as a mouse.
All night I cry ‘Please
Don’t you fancy some cheese?
I’ve set trapsful all over the house.’

Can we lure back our spouses with nibbles? Or woo our lost partners with treats? Am I accidentally writing the start of a Music-Hall song? The answer to the first two questions is, regrettably, ‘no’ … not if the morsels in question are elements in a lurid murder plot. Don’t say it couldn’t happen. Do say, ‘How terribly British, to offer such a flippant take on such a desperate scenario.’

270 • Surplus to requirements

26th September 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

A crafty old crook from Pamplona
Once posed as a cardiac donor.
The ad. for his heart
Said ‘Good second-hand part
Unused by its previous owner.’

‘Crafty’, perhaps, in that the familiar language of Classified Ads deftly deflects attention from the more problematical aspects of his offer. But ‘crook’, really? Where’s the crime in seeking to divest oneself of an organ that serves only as memento of a life untouched by true romance?

266 • Hot Hot Hot

22nd September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My love, while the weather is warm
(Almost three times the seasonal norm)
Let us sprawl in this field
With our soft parts revealed
Awaiting the imminent storm.

The storm is not ‘imminent’, it’s actual. What did St Greta tell you: ‘Make hay while the sun shines, make love while the world burns, make excuses while you bury your dead’? No, I don’t think it was that, but I wasn’t really listening.

264 • Snake in the Boudoir

20th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Coition continued full-tilt
Till a cobra crawled out of the quilt;
This dampened the heat
In the Honeymoon Suite
And a quart of Veuve Clicquot got spilt.

Ordinary folk have little to fear from the proverbial ‘snake in the grass’, because the snake in the grass is minding his or her own business, in the same way as a bridal couple does on their wedding night. The non-proverbial ‘snake in the bedding’, however, is another story, and its kinship with the Garden of Eden narrative – from which humanity didn’t emerge particularly well – is not easily overlooked. For those who will wish to reflect on this matter a little, until we meet next Sunday, a suggested topic: ‘This House believes we should all be a lot happier if the cobra remained in the quilt next time: out of sight, out of mind.’

260 • Whipsnade

16th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Please note that your child, Mary-Lou,
Is banned from our trip to the zoo.
The keepers advise
That a girl of her size
Might get killed by a rogue cockatoo.

Please note, rather, that a truly enlightened society would ban all children from visiting all zoos, the better to hasten their abolition. Since vested interests will surely strive to keep them in business we must – however ruefully – concede that the extinguishing of a few toddlers, by vengeful Psittaciformes bursting forth from internment, might prove a useful catalyst in turning the tide of public opinion against such egregious institutions.

259 • Bigglesworth

15th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Let’s review all the rubbish that’s written
In praise of The Battle of Britain.
At the head of the queue
We find Biggles’s view
(By the which I am thoroughly smitten).

Only a remarkable writer can make real people feel part of a fictional situation; and arguably it’s even harder to convince readers that a fictional character was present in a real situation. Today is Battle of Britain Day, supposedly: click this Amazon link … judge the above-mentioned publications for yourself.

257 • Femme Fatale

13th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Yet rather than cutting my hair
Delilah confided, ‘Beware!
By curtailing the length
I may limit your strength,
And you’ve little of either to spare.’

This morning’s reading from Judges 16 warned us about the guile of Philistine women, and about the likely aftermath of games that involve sexual partners in tying each other up. Our sermon, now, will develop that theme of the femme fatale, and seek to establish which option is – in the long term – more injurious to the male ego: (a) to be castrated outright, or (b) to be spared emasculation thanks to confidential hints that there’s not much down there worth lopping off?

242 • Skin Deep

29th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

It’s hard to be horrid to Hannah,
That winsome and whimsical manner,
The bugs in her bread,
The bones in her bed,
The blood on her Bunty bandanna.

All readers will surely be familiar with this kind of weekend acquaintance, in the presence of whose surface charms we knowingly turn a blind eye to one or more unsettling indicators of their workaday life.

234 • Escapology (2)

21st August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Spent the night in the park. Not depressed,
Simply giving my Real Life a rest.
Woke with seven huge holes
Gnawn by weapons-grade moles
In my warranted bullet-proof vest.

Aspirations to a bucolic idyll are here outweighed by some dark mental baggage. Humanity’s preoccupation with warmongery is not the easiest aspect of ‘Real Life’ to shrug off. A person who dons body-armour for an excursion to Eden can surely not be wholeheartedly expecting a decent night’s sleep.

232 • Messina / Massena

19th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

“So I’ve flown all the way to Messina
To view this Exploding Hyæna,
And now ‘She won’t burst
Till the crowd has dispersed’?
No Sir! I stay here till I’ve seen her.”

Thanks to good ol’ coronavirus the era of self-centered, impetuous air-tourism is drawing to a close. This means more-breathable air all around the world. It also means that the hoodwinking of brainless Americans by shabby Sicilian mountebanks with their callous animal-exploiting sideshows will have to move closer to home: from Messina to Massena, in all probability.

231 • Exterminate!

18th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The Dalek invaders from Skaro
Have colonised Kilimanjaro.
Some say Moriarty
Is leading their party
And plans to exterminate Poirot.

The archetypal figures of modern myth, heroic or villainous, are of course made in our own image, just as their classical antecedents were. Here an African mountain is their Parnassus, from which they observe humanity’s self-destruction; and, as if on stage for our delectation, re-enact it in robotically brutal parody.

229 • Pura tontería, pura sabiduría

16th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The night we gunned down an intruder
He proved to be Pablo Neruda.
Here’s hoping the burglar
We’ve hanged in the pergola
Wasn’t The Lion of Judah.

Constitutionally one is permitted to defend one’s patch, but too often this right is taken by householders as a license to exterminate any foreign or outlandish figure who approaches or penetrates our homesteads. In this morning’s sermon we remember all the great minds and shining role-models, the poets and Aslan-substitutes, who have been swept away in such episodes of indiscriminate violence.

226 • Howzat!

13th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My son hurled a gobbet of Gouda
At a git riding high in a howdah
Who then toppled down dead,
While the elephant fled.
As a parent, I’ve never felt prouder.

Though many will admire this laudable initiative – and the consequent emancipation of an enslaved animal – others may simply be disgusted at the waste of good cheese. (Still others may suspect that the proud father has embellished the facts, in the interests of procuring an unexpected rhyme; and that his offspring’s actual feat was nothing more remarkable than lobbing a brick at a git on a bike.)

225 • Glorious Twelfth

12th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The Glorious Twelfth is at hand!
Posh gunmen all over the land
Utter bloodthirsty howls
And slay thousands of fowls,
A practice I can’t understand
But fervently wish to see banned.

We may long to stop brainless toffs assassinating wildlife; but if we grant Governments the power to curtail people’s hobbies, where will it end? We’d be a nation of vegans … no bad thing.

222 • Apecraft

9th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

As I read in The Military Journal,
An ape’s reached the rank of full colonel.
Since beasts lack a soul
He can act out the rôle
Without fearing Hellfire eternal.

We’ve grown accustomed to press scaremongering concerning military robots, which pictures Artificial Intelligence running berserk on battlefields of the future. Far more alarming, however, are reports that our Masters of War have already appointed creatures – without conscience, yet close to us in tactical reasoning – to execute their damnable machinations. Has humanity learnt nothing at all from the PG Tips scandal of the 1970s?

219 • Bluebird Farewell

6th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my bluebird, Baptiste,
Who detested the winds from the east.
He would drowse on the hob
While the cook did her job …
And was finally part of the feast.

Inexplicably our culture approves the harvesting, for human nourishment, of various fowls of the air. The bluebird, however, has a sentimental significance to many, and the callousness of its assassin in this story is therefore noteworthy.

218 • Escalator

5th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

In order to settle a score
I nailed a dead rat to your door.
Then you glued a grilled stoat
To my second-best coat.
So I’m bursting this slug on your floor …

Animals are often invoked in interpersonal abuse (‘You pig!’ ‘You bitch!’ and so on), but in this bulletin they cruelly serve as bodily sacrifices in what should be a war of words only. And, far from settling the score, their use appears to be ‘upping the ante’, as each participant glories in ever-more savage and ostentatious gestures. Such is humanity’s impercipient appetite for escalation.

217 • Penguin farewell

4th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my penguin, Pierre,
Whose dream was to fly through the air:
Though he clung to that kite
With apparent delight
I felt for his inner despair.

It is not easy to distinguish ‘delight’ in a penguin physiognomy, and it seems probable that the dream of flying was the author’s, not that of his long-suffering pet, which is singularly ill-adapted for such manoeuvres. All too often humanity’s purported kindnesses are, at base, paper-thin masks for gnawing personal inadequacy.

216 • Carruthers

3rd August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I was baiting a bear named Carruthers
At a church of the Carmelite Brothers.
I’m ferociously strong
So he didn’t last long,
But I guess they have plenty of others.

Musculature and morale falter infallibly in captive animals: it’s not the strength of the vainglorious aggressor we marvel at here, but the weakness of his victim. Monks may be ‘known for their unpleasant habits’, as the old joke goes: but should we perhaps applaud this compassionate Brotherhood for allowing its bears to be slain outright? Worldlier bear-baiting gangs are obliged, by commercial imperative, to keep their victims alive, to suffer – for our delight – day after day.

215 • Oyster Farewell

2nd August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my oyster, Odette,
Who could never abide getting wet
But would snivel and cry
When the bed was too dry:
All in all, quite a difficult pet.

This Sunday’s moral dilemma. Which is more odious: to posit an inner life for a creature that self-evidently cannot signal emotion to a human being? Or to denigrate her supposed caprices, when these have clearly been triggered by needlessly-inflicted cruelty?

213 • Jackdaw Farewell

31st July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my jackdaw, Jean-Claude,
Who liked to lie flat in the road.
The neighbours all laughed
But I thought he was daft.
He doesn’t deserve a long ode.

Many will feel it unlikely that the corvid in question ‘liked to lie flat in the road’, and judge it more probable that he was mown down there by a careering juggernaut … which is what the neighbours found amusing.

211 • Flatfish farewell

29th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my flatfish, Phillippe,
Who is, frankly, a bit of a creep.
As I choose my next phrase
I can feel his cold gaze
Though he wants me to think he’s asleep.

The floundering author wishes us to understand that he continues to be haunted, from another realm, by a fishlike gaze of opprobrium – which is more probably the buried memory of well-deserved contempt dished out by a grade school teacher.

210 • Sleeping cats

28th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A hangman, who dwelt in Beijing,
Once dreamt that his cat was a king:
With a wave of its paw
It created a law
That, should he awake, he would swing.

To be alive at all, in this era, is to be somebody’s hangman or hangwoman (or to reside somewhere else on the hang-spectrum); but only in dreams does a person fully acknowledge the prospect of dying by the hand of their own inventions. If this clarity of comprehension invaded ‘Real Life’, should we still be facing such imminent Climate Suicide?

209 • Earthworm farewell

27th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my earthworm, Yvonne,
Who has grown rather pallid and wan.
Certain notes I would hum
Made her coil round my thumb.
I can scarcely believe that she’s gone.

Human beings will mourn even the most apparently-inconsequential creature, once they have elevated it to the status of personal pet. Yet note how this plaint is entirely self-centred, and the principle recollection focuses on episodes of manipulation and control.

208 • Body and/or Soul

26th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

There are Driverless Cars in our town.
Small wonder pedestrians frown:
One went for a jog
With her Bodiless Dog
And a Riderless Bike knocked it down.

Just as Modern Man has dispensed with the idea of the soul, so his cleverest machines now rove at large without their once-crucial guiding hands. Emblematically, in this Sunday’s searching parable, we witness the extinguishing of a Spirit Companion (easily the best kind of dog, in that it does not slobber, yell, bite, excrete or fornicate indiscriminately) by exactly such a futile, mechanical zombie.

207 • A Grand Scheme

25th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

As I sat, with my cat, at the vet’s,
Where a ghastly, huge dog with Tourette’s
Snapped and bellowed and whined,
A Grand Scheme came to mind:
Euthanasia For Other Folk’s Pets.

All true … but let us not be too hard on dogs; it’s so easy to see them as unruly embodiments of all that is vulgar and vicious, and to forget that the cur’s owner in this cameo may feel correspondingly ill-at-ease with the little cat – threatened, even, by the placid decorum with which she awaits her final summons into the consulting-room.

204 • United State

22nd July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘Now we’ve pictured the Earth from the Moon,
All Nations shall Sing the Same Tune.
All Rifts shall be Whole
As we Share the One Goal.’
Great words – but I hope we start soon.

This Utopian creed, this Moon-Age Daydream, was overwritten, as the 60s’ influence waned, by warmongers and capitalists – the enemies of humanity – to the point of obliteration. Half a century on, however, our invisible ally, coronavirus, rides in like the cavalry with a blistering counter-attack … and we’re united once more.

197 • Where are they now?

15th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

We’ve not seen a great deal of Piers;
He hasn’t come this way for years.
The reason he states
Is the size of the weights
That he’s tied to the hairs in his ears.

We’ve not seen a great deal of Layla.
She’s given her heart to a sailor.
She’s renting her spine
To a colleague of mine,
And the rest still remains with her gaoler.

We’ve not seen a great deal of Chalkie
Since he walked, on his hands, to Milwaukee
Where he teaches guitar
At The Conservatoire,
So he claims. But I guess that’s a porky.

A little suite of patterns or exemplars for those who need to craft excuses explaining why they no longer visit people they were friends with in High School (it’s too, too bourgeois, after all, to persist in blaming the Covid crisis for our insularity and self-absorption).

189 • Dr Campbell recollected

7th July 2020 RL Comments 12 Comments

Our Deputy Dean, Dr Campbell
Told us ‘God’s out to get those who gamble’.
Yet she died, in a bet,
Playing Russian Roulette
Which the School needed skill to unscramble.

This somewhat garish episode from childhood taught us more about adult hypocrisy than we could have learnt from any number of bookish fables or homilies. The school Governors reacted to a popular employee’s death by proclaiming a string of revisionist accusations … how she had ‘lied to the Board who appointed her’ … how her college degree had been ‘incorrectly specified’ … how dates of her previous employment ‘contained inaccuracies’. In short, parents could not blame the school for appointing such a dissolute daredevil to be their children’s moral guardian, because ‘Donna Campbell was not the person she purported to be.’ Well, which of us is? Even as a child I was mesmerised by the Establishment’s feeble catalogue of squirming, pedantic and ineffectual exculpations. Hats off, say I, to a memorable teacher, whose gift for non-verbal demonstration imparted such significant life-lessons.

186 • Potus Alert (6)

4th July 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

I’ll tell you what makes for good neighbours:
It’s not any wall-building labours.
It’s missiles piled high
Backed by spies in the sky
And ominous rattling of sabres.

It’s supposedly Independence Day back home, but tragically we are still living in chains, shackled to vindictive incompetence, risible, solipsistic ignorance, and benighted self-delusion.

180 • Ms Purvis recollected

28th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Our Primary teacher, Ms Purvis,
Enlivened a boring church service
By lighting a fuse
That ran under the pews,
And made some of the parents quite nervous.

Ms Purvis was another amiable maverick on our school staff, and this had been one of her more famous Founder’s Day pranks. Of course we urged her to repeat the escapade, but I guess she’d gotten a major rap before, so it had to remain a story.

179 • Blight on Blight

27th June 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

I have only two problems with ‘Noddy’,
The plots and the writing (both shoddy).
If only Ms Blyton
Had worked with the light on
(Or simply been flung in a wadi).

These lines paraphrase my earliest memory of literary criticism. Ms Nicholls’s passion was commendable, her logic less so. A wadi-flinging before 1922, when Blyton published her first title, might have seemed arbitrary and over-harsh. Yet once she’d made it into print, the damage was irreversible – the smug racism, compulsive sexism and wooden stereotyping were out there, a viral formula spreading relentlessly from mind to mind to mind, yea, even unto the third and fourth generation.

178 • Ms Nicholls recollected

26th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

When our Primary teacher, Ms Nicholls
Equipped us with scythes and with sickles
We skipped down the street
Swiping folk off their feet.
She did get us into such pickles!

In a lesson about the Grim Reaper, when I was probably about 7 years old, our teacher brought in her academical robe and some gardening tools, and we took turns to dress up as Death. I owe that school a lot, and return to it often in dreaming. Ms Nicholls seems to have moved on, however.

174 • The Crabmonger

22nd June 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Is anyone else fond of crabs?
I’ve 69 here, up for grabs:
The mother’s no beaut
But her grand-kids are cute.
They’d make a nice change from kebabs.

I have doubtless inveighed before, in this Verse Marathon, against the keeping of animals as pets. Who can remain dry-eyed on apprehending the uncertain status of these crustaceans, offered up by the crabmonger as a foodstuff, even after their family background, and personal charm, have been so heart-warmingly attested.

163 • N.I.L.A.D.

11th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I was spoon-feeding Zsa Zsa Gabor
Till she held up her bowl and said ‘More’.
Sadly ‘Oliver Twist’
Tops the very long list
Of Novels I Loathe and Deplore.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion in literary matters, though ideally it will be accompanied by an explanation, when so forcefully expressed. Our narrator may be scandalised by the anti-Semitism many claim to detect in Dickens’s story; but does that provocation truly justify leaving a femme fatale (albeit a superannuated one) to starve?

162 • Meet the team (17)

10th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A poltergeist, gaunt and grotesque
Sometimes haunts the Enquiries Desk.
When it flings rusty knives
Clients flee for their lives,
Even shrieking the word ‘Kafkaesque’.

This warning is well-meant, no doubt; but it is unclear whether the supposed spectre is a visiting querent, or an employee detailed to impart information. In fact both sides of the Enquiries Desk, in any normal institution, will inevitably be fraught with tiresome memories of frustration and misunderstanding.

161 • Dickens

9th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The day I read Great Expectations
My train had got stuck between stations:
Since time was so tight
I omitted, outright,
All the plot and the long conversations.

When they can find us nothing to look forward to, the British media likes to keep us doped with pointless anniversaries. ‘Today we celebrate the death of Charles Dickens,’ offered BBC Radio 4 a moment ago, and hordes doubtless cheered this maladroit proclamation. As our bulletin suggests, during the 150 years since Dickens’s passing the UK has learnt to scoff at entertainment that requires any imaginative participation.

158 • Manila

6th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Our holiday let in Manila
Was owned by a serial killer:
I can still visualise
How his victims – all flies –
Lay vanquished all over the villa.

At this time of year enforced quarantine, or voluntary isolation, inevitably brings up memories of holidays gone by, often polluting them with intimations of mortality. The tininess, as well as the profusion, of the assassinees is deeply shocking.

155 • Meet the team (14)

3rd June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Don’t squeal, when you first come across
The corpse in the cupboard (our boss –
His wife’s an embalmer).
He died of bad karma,
A sad, but not serious, loss.

The progress of many an institution is hampered by the veneration employees persist in according to the charismatic figureheads of a former imperium. Here, characteristically, a dead boss has not been replaced: his ‘loss’ is judged non-serious, provided his mortal remnant is retained at the premises.

147 • Crinoline Paradox

26th May 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I owe my continued existence
To this garb, worn at Granny’s insistence.
Yes, work colleagues mock
My huge crinoline frock
But they strongly maintain Social Distance.

Fashions come and fashions go. The widest crinoline in its day was some 2 metres across: hence its re-emergence in the Covid Era as an agent of Social Distancing. Paradoxically, however, the present-day Politics of Cool forbid us to shy away from any man who chooses to flaunt his Granny’s cast-offs in public. So what can a poor boy do?

146 • Meet the team (10)

25th May 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

That nurse with the knife is Nanette
Whose brief is our burgeoning debt.
She can cut it by half
If she slashes the staff
But you mustn’t take that as a threat.

The presence of trained medical personnel in the workplace would, in an ideal world, be reassuring. But, trained for what? The idea that my new colleagues and I might be culled, in the name of economies, is somewhat less so.

145 • Excuses

24th May 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

As I lifted the side of the lorry
Twelve pigs tumbled into the quarry.
Thus the law they call ‘Sod’s’
Caused an outcome at odds
With the one I’d been hoping for. Sorry.

An apology ought generally to be accepted in good faith, but perhaps not when the speaker seeks to blame some external ‘law’ for his or her personal blunder. The Bible speaks of demonic possession in falling swine, of course: this might have made for a more winning excuse, though that story’s Animal Rights credentials are pretty flimsy too.

144 • Gross!

23rd May 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

I fear I shall never forget
Being slung in a dank oubliette
With nothing to eat
But three plates of meat
Two plums and a rancid baguette.

I confess that I grow weary of press reports comparing the Social Isolation we temporarily endure, in hope of impeding the incursions of plague, with the privations experienced by ‘lifers’ in the bottle-dungeons of Romantic fiction, whose pretend incarceration made little contribution to society .

137 • Blair / Astaire

16th May 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A delicate dancer from Ware
Explains why she killed Fred Astaire:
‘A quiet inner voice
Said I hadn’t a choice:
It was him, or else Lionel Blair.’

Archetypally spineless strategy, to blame one’s crime on contradictory supernatural promptings. But is it a crime, or rather laudable atavism, to destroy alpha practitioners, thereby clearing the path to pre-eminence in one’s chosen field?

121 • The Ouse

30th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

As the cops drag a corpse from the Ouse:
‘Look Sarge, it’s all covered in clues!’
‘Wrong. The arm says “Suzanne”,
But it’s clearly a man.’
‘Right! We can’t trust a bloke with tattoos.’

This little cameo might suggest that The Boys in Blue — for all their open-mindedness, emotional intelligence and forensic acumen — haven’t quite got their heads around Gender Fluidity yet.

118 • Neath

27th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My dining companion at Neath
Drew a long scary knife from its sheath:
‘You have to get rough
When the steaks are this tough,’
She explained, as she sharpened her teeth.

This was damnably alarming when it happened, and it’s only now, a couple years later, that I realise it’s a neat symbol for the way we damage ourselves by bad eating. [for Ceridwen]

116 • Potus alert (4)

25th April 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

With tough healthcare questions to settle,
‘The Donald’ shows fans his true mettle:
We’ll defeat this disease,
His great wisdom decrees,
If we all begin mainlining Dettol™.

A memorable coronavirus intervention from the well-known TV entertainer. But he’s done himself a disfavor by recanting, and claiming his diagnosis was ‘sarcastic’. Intelligent people might stop taking him seriously.

115 • Euphrates (Volga)

24th April 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

So sorry to read that dear Katy’s
Just drowned in the mighty Euphrates.
Her twin sister Olga
Was drowned in the Volga,
But that was way back in the Eighties.

Some would see the hand of ‘Fate’ in this double accident; others would suspect a genetically-governed recklessness where powerful currents are concerned. Equally, it could all be entirely meaningless.

109 • Frankie and Connie

18th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘Come sailing?’ said Frankie to Johnny.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Can I bring Connie?’
As old ballads tell us
When F. got quite jealous
That picnic went right down The Swanee.

‘This story has no moral, this story has no end. This story only goes to show that there ain’t no good in men’. ‘No, nor women neither.’ It all hinges on the word ‘jealous’. No doubt tabloid readers will judge Bisexual Temptress Connie the guiltiest of the three.

108 • In the dark

17th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Enough of your ifs, buts and maybes,
I need to know when I’ll catch rabies.
Please, Government analysts,
Pundits and panellists,
Treat us like brothers, not babies.

Ever feel you’re being patronised, kept in the dark about the virus crisis, by the vested interests that run the media or stand to profit from the pandemic? More comfortable, isn’t it, than recognising your histrionic worries for what they truly are – the atavistic bleating of the self-obsessed toddler you continue to cherish at the core of your being.

105 • Ribble

14th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

In her self-designed submarine, Sybil
Has been dredged from the depths of the Ribble.
When the river burst in
Through its rice-paper skin
It was very much more than a dribble.

Characteristic press prejudice ensures that this tragedy of the female pioneer, engulfed in her own creation, is much less widely reported than, say, the sinking of RMS Titanic, a male creation with similar design faults.

104 • Final Performance

13th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

An affluent actor from Alnwick,
In his stateroom aboard The Titalnwick
When the tragedy strok,
Gave his ‘Running Amok’
Amidst plain, proletarian palnwick.

Privileged panic is art; plebeian panic is mere lack of self-control. RMS Titanic sank 108 years ago tomorrow. (While almost a third of the human passengers survived, only a quarter of the dogs did. No wonder they hate us.)

103 • Orinoco communion

12th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

We scattered your ashes, dear Yoko,
On the tides of the great Orinoco.
Then we stood on the bank
Where we mournfully drank
One very small cup of cold cocoa.

Strangely our culture dignifies rivers with names, and admiring soubriquets such as ‘great’. But here that adjective serves to minimise the status of the departed, as does the meagre potation, shared among an unspecified number of mourners.

102 • Colorado fading

11th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

We watched our blind bailiff from Boulder,
(As old as the hills, if not older)
Half the night, as he swam
Round and round, at the Dam,
Growing colder and colder and colder.

By definition the Colorado is colorful, but this must have been a dull scene, and the average Joe or Joanne would have packed up and gone home on such a chilly evening. We must admire the moral courage if those who resisted any temptation to intervene as a well-liked character attended to the final actions of his career.

098 • Once Bonnie

7th April 2020 RL Comments 4 Comments

So – why do our mem’ries replay
That film-clip of beauteous decay
In which Clyde, once a sweetie
Becomes less up-Beatty
And Bonnie is Fadun’ Away?

Puns feel inexcusably trite; yet the arch wordplay here seeks to point up cinema’s pollutive complicity in our culture’s collective angst. When The New Hollywood temporarily massacres charismatic stars, its consumers become the life-long victims, haunted and taunted by unshiftable visions of desperate beauty defaced.

096 • Substitution

5th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Please note: our great brain surgeon, Guy,
Has sadly been Summoned On High.
His place will be filled
By this gibbon: unskilled,
Yet keen to be given a try.

Euphemism is the rhetoric of cowards: if a priest cannot mention death from the pulpit, where can we expect to hear it named? Covid 19 takes the high-flying medic as readily as the homeless man; but in the former’s case, as this vicar reminds us, there is no shortage of volunteers willing to step into the breach.

094 • ‘Grand National’

3rd April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The steeplechase season is nigh:
Watch dozens of thoroughbreds die!
Broken leg, broken back,
Put to death by the track.
Let the owners be shot too, say I.

What are these wretched creatures good for? High-status playthings for the rich, exciters of adrenaline for greedy gamblers, disposable victims of capitalism? ‘Grand National’, indeed: what kind of Nation judges their creation, and exploitation, ‘Grand’? Anyway, it ain’t happening in 2020, Year One of the Virus. Hurrah for that.

092 • Poor Tom Foolery

1st April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

As I swung – in my skimpiest Speedos
And the loudest of lime-green tuxedos
From the high diving-board –
Some buffoon cut the cord
(This has happened in several Lidos).

For the committed exhibitionist – a burgeoning breed in our benighted times – no stunt is off-limits. The lifeguard above, intervening to frustrate an ill-judged April 1 prank, is surely not the prime ‘buffoon’. (And if outraged libertarians cite Shakespeare’s King Lear – Act IV, where the suicidal Duke of Gloucester asks ‘Is wretchedness deprived that benefit / To end itself by death?‘ – I shall refute them thus: the Duke, at least, is not play-acting.)

090 • Evasive inaction

30th March 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

On balance, I share your dismay
At the meteorite heading this way.
Such rumours aren’t new
But if this one is true
We’d be wise to start packing today.

Oh, these Overgrown Etonians with their sang congelé in the face of a population-threatening calamity, acknowledged by all neighbouring Governments! Where was the decisiveness, the adrenaline? This entitled lassitude, this phlegmatic indifference to the Commoners’ Fate, shall not go forgotten.

089 • Saint Lawrence

29th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

On his water-skis, down the St Lawrence,
Hurtled John, the Archbishop of Florence;
First his wires became crossed,
Then his halo got lost.
Soon he gave himself up to the torrents.

Factually this new river-piece may seem problematic, fraught as it is with lies and nonsense. Symbolically, however, we find The Baptist succumbing to the immersion on which his fame rested, and note in passing how the foolhardy loss of any churchman’s reputation (cf the halo, above) habitually presages self-extinction.

087 • Irrawaddy

27th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

By a weir on the wide Irrawaddy
I wrestled a square-headed squaddie.
From this wild waterfall
To the Bay of Bengal
It will bear what remains of his body.

Rivers! It’s all too easy to them as rubbish-chutes. A shallow trench could have been dug for the defeated soldier’s corpse, to mitigate the impact of its decomposition on the marine environment.

082 • Saviours

22nd March 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Did you read, on some scrap of papyrus,
How Christ raised the daughter of Jairus?
No dark Dead Sea Scrolls
But soft white paper rolls
For our conquest of Coronavirus.

Admittedly there were no New Testament books among the genuine Dead Sea Scrolls, though with the more recently-discovered fakes anything goes. But whereas those scrolls record the superstitious beliefs of a sect 22 centuries ago, 2020’s rational response to mortal disease is spelt out in the barren superflux of hoarded lavatory-paper.

079 • Trajan

19th March 2020 RL Comments 4 Comments

Our eminent emperor, Trajan
Was minded to marry a Cajun.
But processing in pomp
Through her Baton Rouge swamp
His cohort succumbed to contagion.

Empires are forged and maintained by matrimony; here Trajan’s men are thwarted in their attempt to bring him a trophy bride from exotic, as-yet undiscovered territory, and in the particular case few would doubt that the virus was doing a sterling job.

075 • Ideas of March

15th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

When Cæsar spurned Artemidorus
His senators hollered in chorus,
‘That prophet’s our geeza,
Not you, Mr Cæsar!
Your hubris is starting to bore us.’

Our narrative here differs in several key respects from Shakespeare’s account of the same (15 March 44 BC) episode. Hard to tell who got it right. But a similar marginalisation of the expert, by the egotistical leader, is a perpetual curse in public life.

073 • Friday 13th

13th March 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

I was shoving my mule in his shed
When a meteor fell on his head.
I curse my bad luck …
Why didn’t he duck?
Next time, an alpaca instead.

Let’s not blame the beast of burden, nor bad luck. The fault, dear brutes, is not in our stars, but in ourselves: whatever animal you capture and exploit, it will be the Wrong Choice.

067 • Empty Shelves

7th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Slim pickings … the neighbours are dying …
I’ve left it quite late … panic-buying …
Found five plastic forks …
And this small bag of corks …
But nothing you’d call ‘death-defying’ …

Corona Virus is a gift to the right-wing media that elected the present UK government; amid their craftily-orchestrated furore of hand-washing and panic-buying, who has headspace to worry about the vicious incompetence of Our Leaders? Nobody sane believes that Shopping will Save the Day … but who has the courage not to stock up on indispensibles, ‘just in case’?

062 • Forever young?

2nd March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

They flock to the talks he keeps staging,
That serial killer from Beijing:
Each final recital
Beguiles with its title,
‘Straightforward Prevention of Ageing’.

Of course there are psychopaths – and not solely in the Orient – who prey on the fears of the elderly; but far more culpable, surely, are the youth-glorifying capitalists whose adverts nourish such insecurities.

058 • The new tobacco

27th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The roll-out of 5G’s complete!
Humanity’s stupidest feat!
For most of my life I
Have hidden from Wi-Fi
But now it pollutes every street.

Smoking, the cool trend of a previous generation, is now proven lethal. Likewise this shiny communications technology, foisted on us by profiteering corporations, will probably show its true hand in years to come.

057 • One bullet

26th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Onstage, in the unmatching shoes
A songwriter murders the blues.
My neighbour’s huge feet
Pound an unmatching beat.
One bullet. But which should I choose?

It’s tough enough living in a culture that tolerates second-rate musicians and audience extroverts with bad timing. But, worse still, an archaic constitutional right – to go armed – puts these irritating people’s lives in undeserved jeopardy.

055 • Puma uncertainty

24th February 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

There is no truth at all in the rumour
That I strangled my godfather’s puma.
But I’m licensed to choke
Those who can’t take a joke
And he really had no sense of humour.

In today’s world a bad reputation prospers exponentially, often fertilised by the antics of the gutter press. Referencing concepts from quantum mechanics, the ambiguous pronoun ‘he’ in our final line ensures uncertainty about who has been throttled (even in the most sublime poetry the ‘meaning’, if any, is perforce completed by the reader).

050 • Pisces

19th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Preparing predictions for Pisces
One pictures poor souls on the high seas
Awash on a raft
Or some other frail craft
Facing icebergs as far as the eye sees.

Waking this morning under the zodiacal sign of the fish, I feel convinced that the astrologer is an expert on whom we can still rely in troubled times.

049 • Little Ned (finale)

18th February 2020 RL Comments 4 Comments

Tonight sees the funeral feast
Of Ned the Chihuahua (dec’d).
As principle mourner
I’ll crouch in the corner
And hurl chunks of Pal at the priest.

One might well have passed the redundant stocks of dog-food to another pet-owner, but pelting the ‘priest’ (ie the creature’s sobbing ex-proprietor) with it is a much more cathartic option. [See also here]

038 • Little Ned (3)

7th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

That coroner’s waiting till autumn
To start on your puppy’s post-mortem.
Well the later he gawps
At Ned’s pitiful corpse
The sooner I get to report him.

Maybe I did nothing to make Ned’s brief life agreeable; but I can certainly compensate by a vengeful attack on the slothful bureaucracy that thinks nothing of delaying his funeral. [See also here]

028 • Pandemonium

28th January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

First medics deliver my jab
From the Pandemic Antidotes Lab.
And then they forecast a
Full global disaster:
‘The whole world a mortuary slab’.

Our behaviour is entirely contradictory, but you’ve come to us because we’re experts, and we know our paradoxical behaviour will only strengthen the illusion of authority we take pains to foster.

027 • Little Ned (2)

27th January 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Please note that your puppy-dog, Ned,
Has lately been shot in the head.
Our Desk-Sergeant, Marcus,
Can show you the carcase.
No further light will be shed.

I didn’t get on with this dog, I admit. But I never wanted it to come to this. And the tone of the police memo, specifying their callous Desk-Sergeant merely by a chummy forename – leaves a great deal to be desired. [See also here]

024 • Potus alert (2)

24th January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

X, so we’re told, marks the spot
Where Abraham Lincoln was shot.
If instead he had said
‘Mark a Z on my head’
He’d have lengthened his life quite a lot.

A homily about alphabetical precision, I suppose. Despite its subject matter this one is intended to be read as if we were in Great Britain – to reap the full benefit of those internal rhymes.

019 • Steamrollers

19th January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Said a drunk, in a park, in Manhattan.
‘I’m beginning to notice a pattern:
When steamrollers pass
Where I lie on the grass
It tends to be me that they flatten.’

I was thinking of Sondheim, ‘Sunday in the Park’ or whatever it’s called, but didn’t quite stay on the rails. I’m not sure when steamrollers last ran in New York. This is an historical piece.

014 • Cartographers

14th January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

No prizes for guessing the plight
Of the boffins who set out to write
A useful snake-atlas
That showed all the rattlers
And where, and what person, they’d bite.

For those of us who live in the regions such an atlas would cover, it could have seemed a useful publication. Yet once again we see mankind confounded by a hubristic attempt to pre-empt the processes of nature.

013 • Postcard

13th January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My postcard to Cardinal Newman
Asked, ‘What does it mean to be human?’
‘It means “Knowing You’ll Die”’
Was his simple reply
(I got the same answer from Schumann).

This kind of thoughtful feedback from historical figures is somehow heartening, even if their message is occasionally rather bleak.

010 • Everyman redux

10th January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

John Dough, the old baker from Delph
At last had the town to himself.
The folk that he’d fed
All lay rigid in bed
Or folded away on a shelf.

In which a despairing artisan turns on his fellow Proles. A hint of Americanese may come through in the first couple lines of this piece, though it’s been a while.