Browsed by
Category: Cosmos

360 • Joy to the world

360 • Joy to the world

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.

297 • Scorpio

297 • Scorpio

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.

267 • Libra

267 • Libra

Comments 0 Comment

They weighed you in Libra, the scales:
Now all your fine life-planning fails.
No matter what talents
You chuck in the balance
The world sucks the wind from your sails.

Waking this morning under the sign of the celestial scales, it’s liberating to remember how our lives are laid out in full by the time the midwife has us snipped and weighed. I was 9lbs 10 in my maiden diaper … heavy, man.

231 • Exterminate!

231 • Exterminate!

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.

230 • Cometary Dazes

230 • Cometary Dazes

Comments 0 Comment

Astronomer Royal, Edmond Halley
Confided (back when we were pally),
‘On sighting a comet
I gen’rally vomit;
And shooting-stars drive me doolally.’

Not an ideal companion, then, on our seasonal expedition to the heath to view The Perseid Shower, and to join in the midnight incantations whereby witches implore these cosmic projectiles to validate their hitherto-purposeless trajectories by hailing down on the skulls of this planet’s most infamous leaders.

204 • United State

204 • United State

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.

203 • Omphaloskepsis

203 • Omphaloskepsis

Comments 0 Comment

Astronomers travel to Tulsa
To view the Crab Nebula pulsar.
To spare that expense
It would make far more sense
To stay put, and examine my ulcer.

Yes indeed, with all the sparkling technology at its disposal humanity now tends to look outward, rather than inward, for its enlightenment. But why make expense a guiding principle? Why not emulate the navel-gazers of yore, who lived wisely, if not too well, on cowpats and cobwebs in hovels moulded from their ancestors’ excrements?

202 • Apollo 11

202 • Apollo 11

Comments 0 Comment

An astronaut’s moll named Amanda
Went down in the NASA moon-lander.
Neil and Buzz got away
But she’s there to this day
Penning anti-US propaganda.

Year on year we remember Apollo 11 and its plucky pilots; yet we hear little of the lonely martyr who renounced our planet, choosing instead to rail against its greatest nation from a nearby satellite. Sadly this marooned dissident’s solitary effusions register as mere pinpricks alongside the crass proclamations, 51 years later, of the Overgrown Baby whose vacuous tweetings make his country a daily laughing-stock across the entire world.

201 • Unhappy houri

201 • Unhappy houri

Comments 0 Comment

The great Russian cosmonaut, Yuri,
Was fired into space with a houri.
But when they came down
His face wore a frown
And hers wore a mask of cold fury.

Though the literal truth of this fragment is debatable, it is a parable fit to illustrate any sermon about the moral and ethical implications of sex in space. (The Kremlin evidently didn’t expect the Creator to take pity on the lonely Gagarin, and fashion a companion for him by repurposing a redundant rib).

181 • Opportunity missed

181 • Opportunity missed

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.

142 • Gemini

142 • Gemini

Comments 0 Comment

The outlook’s obscure under Gemini,
The Twins: things are tricky with them on high.
One says, ‘You’re in clover,’
The other, ‘It’s over.’
The end of your world must be semi-nigh.

Arising at dawn, with Castor and Pollux in command overhead, I am heartened and reassured to reflect that the astrologer can still be relied on to be straight with us in these troubled times. Except this month. Our author seems to believe that ‘Dioscuri‘ means ‘obscure gods’ — needless to say, he has small Latin and less Greek.

073 • Friday 13th

073 • Friday 13th

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.

061 • Delinquents

061 • Delinquents

Comments 0 Comment

A posse of querulous crones
Went out in the dark to throw stones.
One struck a black cloud
Which split, like a shroud
As the angels glared down from their thrones

Our scenario here may seem improbable, but of course the demonisation of the Energetic Older Woman is not. No surprise, then, that the angels glared.