Thanks Jim! I missed your response.

Mouldy Pangolins

Who just gave me tea he’d spat in?
Who has taught the greyhound Latin?
Who just let that rabid bat in?

It’s the pangolin
with his mandolin

Who’s a second-rate anteater?
Who can’t cure your drooping peter?
Who’s a virus meet-and-greeter?

It’s the pangolin
and his manky skin

Who’ll be sad when lock-down eases?
Who thinks his long tongue will please us?
Who has never bowed to Jesus?

It’s the pangolin
he’s a fan of sin

Who gets kept in bamboo jails?
Who is rarer than most whales?
Who gets hunted for his scales?

asks the pangolin
in Mandarin

Splendid, Matt! And thank you - a pleasure to read. A tone salutarily apt - after Wyndham's - for these days. (Or should that be 'aptly salutary'?) ;)

Peter Gabriel's Red Rain;
Wells's Martian Red Weed, spreading.
Fraught humanity in pain,
Worrying where this is heading.
Strangely-dreaming soldier digging
(In between his cards and swigging)
Bids the journo share a cup.
Don't Give Up. Please, Don't Give Up.

I wrote this about a month ago (end of March), and it won a little prize in a weekly poetry contest.

Pandemic

A jillion germs now smirk and grin,
grinning (like one aware he’s vicious)
at those who thought the pangolin—

scales and blood and flesh—delicious.
A jillion germs knock at our doors
around the world, both mine and yours.

I’d like to think this all fictitious.
Everybody is suspicious
of anyone who coughs or sneezes,

a protocol I think judicious.
The virus does as it damned pleases.
“Keep your distance! Don’t get near me!”

I shout inside my mind. You hear me?
I fear you and, I’m sure, you fear me.
And so they grin and so we hide

and throw away the travel guide.
Look how they smirk, those jillion germs,
knowing the battle’s on their terms.

EXPONENTIAL EXFOLIATION

It's not only the markets that collapse
in these trying times of isolation
as women miss out on upper lip zaps.
It's not only the markets that collapse
as botox purveyors take enforced naps,
as botox beauticians turn off their taps.
It's not only the markets that collapse
in these trying times of isolation.
Still they can be fashionably masked
without worrying about being asked
to show their identical upper lips
and exposing their collapsed botox blips!

To show I can take it as well as dish it out!


IN TIMES OF TROUBLE, A STIFF UPPER LIP

Women today are much stronger.
Ubiquitous stiff upper lips
ensure they are weak no longer.
Women today are much stronger,
a resolve that lasts much longer,
if there aren’t any botox blips.
Women today are much stronger,
with smooth, strong and stiff upper lips!

And, me too, with a little prick
some botox might just do the trick!

A bit of erasure poetry.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...d3ea9bda_z.jpg

Same Weapon, Different Target

Let’s sneer at the barbarians.
They’re backward through and through.
To kill and cook up wildlife is their favorite thing to do.

Let’s sneer at the barbarians.
They’ll swallow anything.
They’ll buy whatever batshit cures their snake-oil salesmen sing.

Let’s sneer at the barbarians.
They spit on Western science.
They give our doctors’ expertise derision and defiance.

Let’s sneer at the barbarians.
They’re stupid and naive.
It’s really unbelievable, the nonsense they’ll believe.

Let’s sneer at the barbarians,
and openly deplore
their love for Trump—since sneering's never failed us Dems before....

Doh!
 

The Rapist Republicans Respond 2020

Don’t ask about health science
Don’t ask about the virus
Don’t ask about our conscience
It’s just a hoax to us.

Don’t ask about the lock-downs
Don’t ask about closed schools
Don’t ask about protective gowns
Such questions come from fools.

Do ask if we like stealing
Do ask about The Street
Do ask if we like dealing
Cause we do love to cheat.

Do know we’ll hide our taxes
Do know we’re self-promoters
Do know our fuck-you lapses
Let the virus thin Dem voters! *

*That is, the brown, the black and the ugly. As well as nursing home seniors (who, as Fox's idiot says, "are on their last legs, anyway.")

We sneer for lack of options against implacable stupidity?