Potentates Archives • My Dog Errol

362 • Abbesse ! Aidez !

27th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The Abbess’s audit, Your Highness,
Regarding young Thomas Aquinas:
‘In his heart, nonpareil …
In his head, off the scale
But in bed? Sadly, E– – –.’

When the great Georges Perec wrote ‘Abbesse! Aidez!‘ he was perpetrating a sound-pun involving the first four letters of the alphabet as they are pronounced in the Kingdom of Francophonia. Today’s sermon, however, purports to reveal one species of help a real Abbess was able to offer to a Pope, and demonstrates how her early assessment of the levitating-saint-to-be – namely, that his compassion and intellect considerably outweighed any carnal prowess – exactly foretold the characteristics for which ensuing centuries would come to venerate him.

346 • Gold-digger

11th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

She longed for a dance with Disraeli;
Despatched ardent messages daily.
But weeks turned to years
As her cheeks burned with tears
And he never came down to the cèilidh
(Nor played on her pink ukulele).

She longed for a breakfast with Balfour
(As males go, she rated him Alpha):
But his strange emissar
In an accent bizarre
Said ‘He can’t even spare you a half-hour.’

She longed to ensnare Lord Macaulay
But he’d just pretend to be poorly.
Undaunted by failure
She fled to Australia
To marry the mayor of Kalgoorlie.

The lives of the British politicians about whom our predatory protagonist fantasises span the period 1800–1930, albeit in staggered array. Balfour was 11, and Disraeli 55, when Macaulay expired … so it seems scarcely probable that she might have harboured carnal expectations of all of them simultaneously. Readers who possess (and know how to use) a calculator will be ready to compute the probable span of her obsessions, and her likely age when she set her cap at the Antipodean mayor – but should not overlook the fact that gold was not discovered at Hannan’s Find (later called Kalgoorlie) until 1893.

345 • Take-Away (2)

10th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Today our great monarch, King Louis
Is planning to ban ratatouille,
And pass a new law
Which (to curb Habsburg Jaw)
Will require all our food to be chewy.
NOW BRING ME A DISH OF CHOP SUEY.

Classic overkill from a monomaniacal tyrant. By all means take steps to extirp a congenital deformity brought on by in-breeding. But why impose dietary sanctions on the ornery populace? Don’t these potentates realise that they look weird only because the rest of us have normal jaws? Far more appetising, then, to address the problem by making ratatouille an obligatory staple, so that – if it really causes that egregious chin condition – we shall all, in time, look like our freakish overlords, and cease to lampoon and satirise them.

343 • Take-away

8th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘Hi; this is your bartender, Barney.
So sorry: your chilli con carne
Has gone by mistake
To the shack of a Sheikh
Who’d only sent out for a sarnie.’
NOW BRING ME A LAMB BIRYANI.

Too work-obsessed to think of catering for himself, the rhymester receives the phone-call everybody dreads. Sadly his response – too spontaneously Wordsworthian to be constrained within his verse-form of choice – is merely a variation on the original impulse, to rely on carry-out: it is certain to lead to further disappointment.

313 • Unholy ghost

8th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I had just been relieved of my post
(No 2 in the Heavenly Host)
When the Infidel Horde
Made me Chair of the Board
(Not bad for an Unholy Ghost?).

It may seem, following today’s developments, that we have the opportunity to lighten up, and turn our thoughts aside from the Orange Demon and his festering cohort. Yet, as Paradise Lost reminds us, the exile may well carve out a new kingdom … he has millions to make as an after-dinner speaker, a freakshow curiosity whose legacy will be measured by the volume of vomit he induces. So, what better way to salute John Milton, who died on this date in 1674, than to flip thru the above-mentioned 80,000-word epic, on which this morning’s rhyme is based? Then, in lieu of stepping out to church, reward your labors with a full English beanfeast.

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.

311 • Liar, Liar

6th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

“Do tell! What became of that lout
Whose lies you once bandied about?
Did he close down your cult?
Or become an adult?”
“Nah. The fire in his pants fizzled out.”

Overheard this time next year, in the Smithsonian: a former Democrat and an erstwhile Republican chatting as they admire a wittily elegant ‘Tactical Chaos’ exhibit from 2020 [it’s a cloisonné enamel pin, in gold-plated brass, on which portly presidential ‘pants on fire’ are presented with little shifty eyes and a comical golden quiff … I got mine here].

308 • A Sensible Choice?

3rd November 2020 RL Comments 1 Comment

Lock that ape in his airtight Rolls Royce
Till it stifles his snide, stupid voice.
Draw a line in the sand.
Send a sign to the land:
Maybe, this time, a Sensible Choice?

Three instructions for November 3.

306 • Regicide

1st November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

With all common sense in abeyance
I summoned MacBeth, at a seance
(The usual procedure
The cards and the ouija)
But no one ‘came through’ (except Fleance).

In Shakespeare’s time the monarch was revered as God’s representative on earth, and to kill him (or her) was a sin without parallel. Today, of course, such potentates as we still acknowledge are more typically reviled as emissars of Satan. In our moments of deepest despair, therefore, we might wish to be possessed by some high-flying assassin, and to accomplish what needs to be accomplished; but in fact all we can muster is the spirit of an obscure runaway, remembered only for fleeing a scene of monstrous injustice – an epitome of cravenness in crisis.

302 • Against the day

28th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

America, rise! There’s a war on
More epic than Gandalf v Sauron:
You can vote, by the 3rd,
For The Truth and The Word,
Or the megalomaniac moron.

An Amazon blurb in 2006 announced a new novel set in ‘a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places’. Some believed those words were written by the novelist himself, Thomas Pynchon. Others are certain that they were penned by a time-travelling fugitive from today’s Washington, where a farcical tragedy is unfolding in which we have all been given a part. If this were played upon a stage … I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. But fiction it ain’t. We gotta get shot of the Ramblin’ Man. I’m pynchin’ myself, but I don’t bite my tongue: You hear me Tolkien to ya?

296 • Class distinction

22nd October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘Stand my bodyguard down,’ cried The Duke
As he strode through the crowds in the Souk.
‘See, the commoners blench,
And recoil from the stench
Of my horseradish-sodden perruque.’

More heart-warming stories of this kind might do much to restore ordinary folk’s admiration for their overlords, who are too often painted by the media as out-of-touch, self-absorbed, and lacking in self-knowledge. This unspecified Duke amply possesses what Shakespeare calls ‘the common touch’, and harbours no illusions about the effect his presence has on the lower orders.

295 • Startling

21st October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Please note that your patron, Earl Spenser,
Will not be admitted to Mensa.
His Lordship’s IQ
Is quite startling, it’s true.
We have never met anyone denser.

This rhyme concerns a fictional Earl Spenser, not to be confused with the orator who on 6 September 1997 – while eulogising ‘the most bizarre-like life’ of his late sister – shared with a grieving nation the ironic insight that ‘a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.’ In a further proof of sagacity, the real Earl resisted any temptation to dilate upon Diana’s other attributes … goddess of chastity / fertility / the moon, sometime consort of Lucifer, etc etc.

294 • Akhnaten

20th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Akhnaten, my favorite Pharaoh,
Bellowed ‘Blast!’, as we danced the bolero:
His fury was focused
On quite a large locust
Which savaged his silver sombrero.

This bulletin attempts to pinpoint the ‘pistol-shot’ that heralded one of Egypt’s Great Plagues. Had this been confined to insects’ molesting the ostentatious headgear of an entitled plutocracy, the populace would doubtless have considered the whole business a blessing. History tells a different story, but as ever we are at liberty to believe whichsoever version we prefer.

293 • Nefertiti

19th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I flew my cartoon autogyro
To draw Nefertiti in Cairo:
What a look of surprise
When I dotted her *i*s
And crossed both her *t*s with my biro!

It was Tintin, I believe, who introduced my younger self to the possibilities of the autogyro; likewise his creator, Hergé, sparked my lifelong interest in drawing. The summons from a Pharaoh was a pleasant, if predictable, consequence of these twin influences (Akhnaten was gracious enough to approve of the woman I drew for him, and subsequently married her).

282 • Discharge

8th October 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

“This golden-haired Man in the Moon,
This fat-headed, pus-filled balloon,
This bag of black bile
Laced with venomous guile:
His discharge can not come too soon.”

Adapted from last night’s two-hour call with my one-time class-mate back home. No idea who or what he was ranting about … I just enjoyed hearing his rage … hardly needed a phone … [thanks bigly, Hooch]

272 • The New Solomon

28th September 2020 RL Comments 3 Comments

The Nabob of New Nagasaki
Has painted his genitals khaki.
The grounds he supplied
Were ‘To stop my young bride
From bragging she’s slept with a darkie:
We hate all that racist malarkey.’

A companion piece to yesterday’s heartfelt parable, this bulletin depicts ‘a leader whose perception and compassion present a stark and humiliating contrast to the failings of Western potentates’. The sacrifice the Nabob makes – in order to negate a loathsome opinion, voiced in unacceptable language – reveals ‘a Zen-like clarity of action and a laudable commitment to non-confrontational protest’. Astute and deftly understated, part of his testament ‘deserve[s] to be carved deep into the façade of every Governmental HQ on the planet’, where many hope to see ‘bas-reliefs in granite, gigantic friezes and modish, gaudy frescoes commemorating the compact wit and crystalline sagacity of a latter-day Solomon’.

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.

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?

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?

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.

181 • Opportunity missed

29th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

At the edge of the old aerodrome
There hovered a shimmering dome.
Some alien lord
Tried to lure me aboard.
‘Forget it,’ said I, and went home.

At first glance there’s a rare honesty about this recollection: no ‘alien abduction’ ensued. Yet the narrator’s peremptory rejection of the ‘alien lord’ is probably a gesture of self-disgust from a speaker disappointed at having subscribed to garish 1950s’ sci-fi tropes, themselves anaemic emblems of dissatisfaction with the inescapable dystopia we have imposed on ourselves.

177 • Postcard (2)

25th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My card to the poet John Dryden
Asked, ‘What of the sea-god, Poseidon?’
‘A bit of a nonce,’
Was his simple response
(I got the same answer from Haydn).

Dryden, ‘Glorious John’, died some 320 years ago, yet this does not preclude his responding, in dreams, to a postcard from a fan. More remarkable, perhaps, is that Haydn – whose earthly life did not overlap at all with Dryden’s – should turn out to echo the latter’s downbeat assessment of a celebrity nymph-molester. [See also here]

176 • Medusa

24th June 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

That ugly, snake-headed Medusa
Whom painters depict as a loser
Was once wise and fair
(And had regular hair)
Till Poseidon turned up to abuse her.

Legend tells how wily he-man Perseus slew the snaky-haired she-monster, reflecting her petrifying gaze back in her own eyes by using a mirror, the ironically-selected symbol of feminine vanity. Yet the neglected prequel is a viciously contemporary catalogue of power-seduction and slut-shaming. #MeToo indeed.

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.

154 • Corona-nation

2nd June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The last time I spoke to the Queen
It was only her voicemail machine:
While awaiting the ‘beep’
My hand went to sleep
And my mobile fell in the latrine.

Your Majesty, a few lines to celebrate 67 years since your Coronation! Or Covid19tion, are we saying that now? Anyway, that’s a long time on the throne, a high toilet-tissue mileage. Sorry we never got to chat, back in the day. The music was pretty loud at my end. Perhaps at yours too – maybe that’s why you didn’t pick up?

133 • Potus alert (5)

12th May 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Was ever a leader alive
More ripe for his P45
Than the 45th Potus?
So who are these voters
Who want his regime to survive?

‘P45’ means different things in different territories; back home, it’s that contemptible clown in the White House; here in Britain it’s a ‘pink slip’ document you receive from your employer when your contract terminates. The rhyme above, on the occasion of the Nebraska Primaries, optimistically brings the two meanings together in a transAtlantic alliance.

129 • Meet the team (3)

8th May 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

And this is your manager, Amy.
Her statements are all pretty samey:
Things like ‘Cover my back,’
And ‘I’m all right, Jack,’
And ‘Die if you ever betray me.’

The predictability of these proclamations is reassuring, even if the office culture they suggest runs counter to civilised expectation.

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.

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.

080 • Phallus vs. Breast

20th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘Dear Cleo,’ said Julius Cæsar
(He was trying his utmost to please her),
‘I do like the style
Of your place near the Nile,
That huge Leaning Tower of Giza.’

We must guess that Cleopatra’s response was something along the lines of ‘Cease this detestable though widespread practice of patronising your host civilisation by construing it in terms of the paltry achievements of your own country.’

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.

078 • The Ominous Snowman

18th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

One burden of being a Roman
Is that, having been mugged by a snowman –
Which was merely an ogre
Wrapped up in a toga –
Great Cæsar must deem it An Omen.

Our Roman week continues. I don’t know if Tacitus or Suetonius or any of that crowd mention the above episode. But if it occurred, those who deny the meaninglessness of this world will undoubtedly have invested it with Weighty Significance.

076 • Northward Ho!

16th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Their streets stretched so straight through the regions
Controlled by great Rome and her legions.
They vented their wrath
On the Gaul and the Goth
But nothing could tame the Glaswegians.

Scotland the Brave, as some would call it, has stood up feistily to a variety of dominators from the south, both before and since the building of the Antonine Wall.

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.

071 • Pot luck

11th March 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

‘We met on a mauve double-decker
That never quite made it to Mecca.
Now she lives in a squat
But my life’s gone to pot,’
Said the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

This historical piece harks back to a distant time when posing on the Hippie Trail held more noble allure for a university graduate than posing as an investment analyst in The City.

069 • Laddish bragging

9th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘I went to a marvellous party:
And shagged this cute goddess, Astarte,
In front and behind,
Then got my dick signed
By most of The Illuminati.’

Pretty much as I heard it on the train, though with a few details changed to make it rhyme better. Testosterone talking, but his fellow travelers took it for gospel. Had to feel sorry that he’d swallowed those role-players’ stories. At least he managed to quote Noël Coward correctly. [This one is for my correspondent and critic, Ura]

066 • A Royal Tribute

6th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I frequently found John of Gaunt
In a somewhat unsavoury haunt
Where he wasted his days
In a dope-addled haze
And the arms of a dull débutante.

The great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandperson of the UK’s well-known Prince Harold would have turned 680 this morning, had he not chosen to squander his privileged life in unrewarding dissipations. Still, British society typically takes the older roué to heart … so Many Happy Returns, Gaunty-Boy!

060 • Leap lines

29th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The lemming’s reputed to leap
From clifftops, to die in the deep.
But none of that’s true,
It’s what Britishers do
When they follow some self-serving creep
And vote ‘Leave’ while their minds are asleep.

Leap Day entitles the poet to employ a Leap Line, the better to evoke the Leap of Faith, lately made by our British allies, into the icy depths of worldwide contempt and opprobrium.

052 • Go, diva

21st February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A message from Lady Godiva:
She wants you to act as her driver.
One thing: have a care
Not to whistle, or stare,
And kindly contain your saliva.

This hokey British legend (adapted) shows how little has changed since the Dark Ages or whenever: an eternal triangle featuring the coy exhibitionist, the willing voyeur, and the disingenuous admonitions of a leering go-between.

046 • Potus alert (3)

15th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

“My wall will be tall, and much finer,
Than even the Great Wall of China.
Gonna fly to Beijing
Meet with President Ming
And head-hunt his brilliant designer.”

The author apologises once again for having befouled readers’ imaginations with such a contemptible waste of DNA. Should the speaker take that flight, it would surely be a heartbreaking tragedy for the world if he were to succumb to the current plague.

031 • Infiltrator (3)

31st January 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Before I arrived in this town
I traded my clothes with a clown.
Written off as a berk,
I may openly work
To turn the whole world upside down.

For the day my adopted country throws out the baby with the bathwater. The guile of the demagogue matching the gullibility of the person in the street. [Related story]

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.

022 • Potus alert

22nd January 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Vacationing in The Bahamas
Misfortune befell the Obamas.
On the night she forgot
Where they’d anchored their yacht
A crocodile stole his pyjamas.

It’s a question of scale, no?

011 • On a plate

11th January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Karl Marx lived in Notting Hill Gate
With a world-weary waitress named Thwaite.
Yet until she retired
Every thing he desired
Was handed to him on a plate.

An indictment of bourgeois hypocrisy, or an evocation of True Love? Apparently her name was Tanya. (Adjustment of the geography of London, and of certain other particulars, has been necessary to make this piece come out satisfactorily).

006 • Nero

6th January 2020 RL Comments 5 Comments

For Boris, the Emperor Nero
Was clearly a personal hero:
Self-centred, uncouth
A stranger to truth
And with street-credibility zero.

I blanch to have polluted readers’ minds with such a contemptible waste of DNA.

005 • Courtiers

5th January 2020 RL Comments 4 Comments

Each evening the King of Kowloon
Egests, from his gullet, a prune.
His courtiers compete
As they crouch at his feet
To flick it away with a spoon.

There may well not be a King of Kowloon at present; but anywhere, any time, you’ll find entitled hierarchies demeaning the grovelling lowerarchy. That’s what we’re investigating in this piece.

003 • Three sisters

3rd January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Cordelia, Goneril: call
The hunters to dine in our hall.
Yet do not call Regan.
Since she became vegan
We have no such daughter at all.

Some time before the play begins, I assume, the alpha-male tyrant rallies his sycophants against the principled child. A pity Shakespeare overlooked King Lear’s fourth child Greta, ‘Mistaken, at first, for a beta …’