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Category: Sport

348 • Carnality, spirituality

348 • Carnality, spirituality

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You claim that your abs and your pecs
Will dazzle the opposite sex?
I tell you my quads
Have bewildered the Gods
And reduced them to gibbering wrecks.

This is the question for all us body-builders, is it not, whether ’tis nobler to pump up one’s corpse grotesquely in hope that impressionable young women will fancy being steamrollered by one’s unseemly bulk, or whether to treat the said corpse as some kind of overblown temple wherein the majesty of the Divine may be both parodied and repudiated.

326 • Sagittarius

326 • Sagittarius

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I’m sorry to say, Sagittarius,
Your outlook’s still far from hilarious:
They’ll shoot holes in your hat
Or else puncture your cat,
Those nasty new neighbours nefarious.

Waking today under the zodiacal influence of the archer, how can one doubt that it’s solely the astrologer who has the insight to guide us through troubled times: inspired by the crossbow on high, his or her aim is true.

320 • The Apple

320 • The Apple

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Yelled Adam to Cain, ‘Listen lad,
Don’t feed that big snake: he looks bad.’
Whispered Eve, ‘It’s OK:
Take an apple a day
For your real, biological dad.’

‘Every harlot was a virgin once‘, our Great Poet reminds us; in similar spirit this morning’s sermon invites us to reconsider the First Fratricide who, as a blameless tot, feels an instinctive kinship with the serpent that seduced his mother. Adam’s mistrust of the entity that cuckolded him is understandable; yet contradictory parenting ensues, undoubtedly sowing the seeds of Cain’s transgressive development. Wiser heads than mine must ponder how Mary and Joseph sidestepped this problem, when a similar predicament beset their own relationship.

305 • Perpetraitor

305 • Perpetraitor

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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.

291 • Implants

291 • Implants

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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?

264 • Snake in the Boudoir

264 • Snake in the Boudoir

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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.’

263 • Playing away

263 • Playing away

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I’d love to be playing croquet
But there aren’t enough hours in the day.
Let’s wait till Angharad
And I have got married,
Then nothing will stand in my way.

Yeah right, nothing will stand in my way … except Angharad herself. Who’d have guessed? Maybe I should have asked her to join in the fun, of course, but it’s a bit late in the day for that now.

258 • Faye King

258 • Faye King

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Forgetting the wives they’re forsaking
Men queue for a fling with Miss Faye King:
We all know she neuters
Her second-rate suitors.
It just seems a gamble worth taking.

Incredibly there are men who would disagree that emasculation, by some painted celluloid vamp, is ‘a gamble worth taking’. What abject feebletons! We Real Men can validate our virility only through high-profile competitive mating; an alpha Hollywood vedette is both a mirror for male vanity and an antidote to the slow poison of a complacent marriage. The conquest, and satisfaction, of such illusory femmes fatales constitutes a Darwinian endorsement, a seal of machismo. In our dreams, at any rate; our most ignoble and embarrassing dreams.

254 • Monster hoax

254 • Monster hoax

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Those tracks that we noticed, while skiing,
Suggest some gargantuan being.
Maybe Bigfoot is real?
If that print was his heel
Then his toes will be something worth seeing.

In a secular age, humanity’s innate yearning for supernatural guidance finds expression through the belief in, and adulation of, some improbable freaks. Lumpen, unruly monsters fascinate the American psyche, their stupidity presenting an intriguing counterpoise to inconceivable power. Still, only a couple more months before voters can consign one such oafish hoax to richly deserved oblivion.

248 • Freya

248 • Freya

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My match stalled at love-love with Freya,
A consummate shuttlecock player.
She fielded the blame
For our unfinished game
Though a lot of the culpa was mea.

‘Match-maker’, ‘player’, ‘score’, ‘clean sheet’ – sporting jargon is readily confused with informal terms relating to the so-called Battle of the Sexes. Did the lovely Freya catch me on the rebound? Did I take one for the team? A gentleman’s lips are sealed. Or they were sealed. But this Friday is Freya-day. I fear it will be a long walk to the pavilion.

216 • Carruthers

216 • Carruthers

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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.

094 • ‘Grand National’

094 • ‘Grand National’

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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.

091 • Zambesi

091 • Zambesi

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From the source of the mighty Zambesi
My swim to the coast looks so easy.
(When euphoria palls
The Victoria Falls
May turn me a trifle more queasy.)

Each human individual is trapped at the centre of their world; of course, the cause for queasiness here is not the loss of one foolhardy adventurer’s life, but the outright death of the river, precipitated by humanity’s dithering over the climate crisis.

089 • Saint Lawrence

089 • Saint Lawrence

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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

087 • Irrawaddy

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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.

070 • Grasshopper

070 • Grasshopper

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A grasshopper went in the closet
And left an unwholesome deposit
Then sued the hotel
On account of the smell.
That wasn’t quite cricket, now, was it?

‘There’s nothing in your Verse Marathon that’s suitable for reading to little children,’ writes one reader. True, and I didn’t intend to imply that there would be. This morning, however, a tale of an anthropomorphic insect, in a lightweight tone suitable for any age-group.