901

BORIS THE SPIDER (A song by The Who)

Look, he's crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he's up above my head
Hanging by a little thread.

Boris the spider

Now he's dropped on to the floor
Heading for the bedroom door
Maybe he's as scared as me
Where's he gone now, I can't see

Boris the spider

[Chorus]
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

BORIS THE TORY

Clever playboy PM here
Eager puppy; boyish cheer
Blue-eyed chancer in a mess
Oh, all's well, the snob says.

Feeble cycling eccentric
PM making people sick
Why, he vowed to help play ball
Go chase goals political.

A bawdy flawed character
A disgraced PM schemer
Cheery Latin speeches? He
Creates deadly anarchy.

Boris the Tory

[Chorus]
Worry, worry,
weep and cry
Worry, worry, weep and cry
Worry, worry, weep and cry
Worry, worry, weep and cry

902

Prince Charles had decided he should do something about his fitness, especially as he might be King in the not-too-distant future, which would require more stamina.

So, with this in mind, he'd started doing regular running sessions round the London streets.

Every day during his run, he would pass a hooker standing on the same street corner.

He'd learned to brace himself as he approached her, knowing the various saucy remarks that were almost certain to follow.

"Hey sweetie! One hundred and fifty pounds for a good time?" she'd yell from her spot.

"No! Five pounds!" He would shout back, to shut her up.

This ritual between the two became a daily event. He would jog by and she would invariably cry out, "One hundred and fifty pounds - yes?"

He'd yell back, "No! Five pounds!"

One day, Camilla decided that she wanted to accompany Charles on his run

As the jogging couple neared the working woman's corner, Prince Charles realised she would bark her usual 'hundred-and-fifty-pounds' remark and Camilla would wonder what he had really been doing on his past outings. He figured maybe he'd better have a reasonable explanation ready for his wife.

As they jogged into the turning that would take them past the woman, he became more nervous than usual.

Sure enough, there she was. Charles tried to avoid the woman's eyes as she watched them jogging past. Then, from her spot on the street corner, the hooker yelled:

"Oy! See what you get for five pounds, you tight bastard?"

A wife was having a daytime affair while her husband was at work.

One rainy day she was in bed cuddled up with her lover when, to her shock, she heard her husband's car pull into the drive.

'Oh my goodness!' she gasped. 'Quick! Pick up your clothes and jump out the window. My husband's come home early!'

'I can't jump out there!' protested the lover, 'it's pouring!'

'Look, if my husband catches us here, he'll kill us both!' she snapped. 'He's got a savage temper and a gun, so the rain's the least of your problems!'

At that, the lover scooted out of bed, picked up his clothes and leapt out of the window.

As he ran off down the street in the pouring rain, he discovered he'd landed right in the middle of the town's annual marathon, so he started jogging along beside the others, about three-hundred of them.

Despite being barefooted, naked and having his clothes tucked under one arm, he tried to blend in as best he could.

After a few minutes, a small group of runners who'd been watching him with some curiosity, jogged closer to chat. 'Excuse me, do you always run in the nude?' one asked.

'Oh yes!' he replied, gasping for air. 'It feels so wonderfully free!'

Another runner moved alongside. 'Do you always run carrying your clothes under one arm?'

'Oh, yes' he answered breathlessly. 'It means that I can get dressed at the end of the run and get straight into my car to drive home.'

Then a third runner cast his eyes a little lower and asked, 'Do you always wear a condom when you run?'

'Only when it's raining.'

903

Daybreak In Alabama
by Langston Hughes

When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.

Dorian in Alabama
by Donald Trump

When I get to be President
I'm gonna get me a new black Sharpie marker
And draw an additional loop
On the end of a storm's path,
A loop that will overlap with Alabama.
I'll dishonestly continue to say anything.
Unfounded announcements
Like bad Barack Obama's birth certificate,
Factitious Afghan news
And enough hatefulness,
Fibs about them bugging my Manhattan, New York Tower,
Not knowing David Duke
And that babe I shagged.
I'd endlessly defend my fraudulent West Wing deeds
And be a "Bottomless Pinocchio"
And challenge Kessler, Factcheck.org,
Snopes.com and PolitiFact
And deny, deny, deny.
When I get to be President
I'll safely draw on a U.S. map
With a black Sharpie marker
Showing Hurricane Dorian
In Alabama.

904

STUCK ON YOU
By
Lionel Richie

Stuck on you
I've got this feeling down
Deep in my soul
That I just can't lose
Guess, I'm on my way
Needed a friend
And the way I feel now I guess
I'll be with you till the end
Guess I'm on my way
Mighty glad you stayed

I'm stuck on you
Been a fool too long I guess
It's time for me to come on home
Guess I'm on my way
So hard to see
That a woman like you could wait
Around for a man like me
Guess I'm on my way
Mighty glad you stayed

Oh, I'm leaving on that midnight train tomorrow
And I know just where I'm going
I've packed up my troubles
And I've thrown them all away
Because this time little darling
I'm coming home to stay

I'm stuck on you
I've got this feeling down
Deep in my soul
That I just can't lose
Guess, I'm on my way
Needed a friend
And the way I feel now I guess
I'll be with you till the end
Guess I'm on my way
I'm mighty glad you stayed

STUCK WITH GLUE
By
'The Gloomy Weather Guy'

I'm stuck with glue,
In London enjoying myself
Up on the roof
Of a subway train,
I am here to stay.
Oh, don't you see?
This gloomy world is gonna end soon,
So do I care
If you can't get to work?
I am stayin' here.

I'm stuck like glue,
So you mugs might as
Well just toddle off home,
Ideally you may stay,
Joining in with me,
As I spout my views while you
Get mad, but hey I don't care,
If you shout and swear.
I won't go away.

Oh, you won't be leaving on this morning train today,
Mayhem is my middle name,
My main message must be voiced,
So stop the baying noise,
My mind's made up, you will not change it,
I've decided you will stay.

I was stuck like glue,
Till nine commuters all
Mounted the train
And hauled me down,
Then laid into me.
Get a medic!
Gee, the way I'm feeling now
I get the message in full,
You don't like my views;
I guess it's not my day.

905

[For Halloween, Dickinson's morbid poem is anagrammed into a sonnet about haunted house decorations with a fitting acrostic and another, more sinister constraint:]

Emily Dickinson's "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain"

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

My Shiny New Haunted Mansion

Heed every mini-gag I crammed in here!
A cauldron that I stir, with gunk and mud,
Live bats that soar and one hound lurking near,
Lewd lanterns and that bone pile set in blood,
One leaky body bag with my dead wife,
Wraiths that'll rise from tombs and tend to scorch,
Expired pig-brain and a grand, mean knife,
Eggs painted like wee skulls and one neat torch,
Nice innards and a lab like Frankenstein's,
Peeled grapes I label 'eyeballs' in that bowl,
A rat-man figure with a broken spine,
Rank heads that moan and an indecent troll...
The guest who's not engaged so far, beware:
You lived a gentle life. Time for a scare.

[Other than the acrostic, a cursed number of 13 demon names from world mythology and folklore - and then Satan himself - can also be found anagrammed in each of the sonnet's 14 lines:]

My Shiny New Haunted Mansion

Heed every mini-gag I crammed in here!
A cauldron that I stir, with gunk and mud,
Live bats that soar and one hound lurking near,
Lewd lanterns and that bone pile set in blood,
One leaky body bag with my dead wife,
Wraiths that'll rise from tombs and tend to scorch,
Expired pig-brain and a grand, mean knife,
Eggs painted like wee skulls and one neat torch,
Nice innards and a lab like Frankenstein's,
Peeled grapes I label 'eyeballs' in that bowl,
A rat-man figure with a broken spine,
Rank heads that moan and an indecent troll...
The guest who's not engaged so far, beware:
You lived a gentle life. Time for a scare.

[Mini-gag = Gamigin, a horse-like Goetic demon;
I stir = Sitri, a demon prince and fallen angel;
That soar = Astaroth, the great duke of Hell;
Pile set = Pelesit, a Malay grasshopper demon;
Leaky = Leyak, a Bali sorceror-demon;
Rise = Seir, a Goetic hell-prince;
A grand = Rangda, the demon queen of Leyaks;
Torch = Chort (AKA Bies), a Slavic demon;
A lab = Baal, one of the kings of Hell;
I label = Belial, a demon in Jewish & Christian folklore;
Rat-man = Namtar, a Death demon in Mesopotamian mythology;
Moan = Amon (AKA Aamon), the Grand Marquis of Hell;
So far = Foras (AKA Forcas), a president of Hell;
Lived = Devil.]