Weekly Muse

TODAY begin the Halcyon days

When wind and seas are light and calm

Or so an ancient sage proclaimed

Me? I think he chanced his arm.

An epidemic worse than flu

Is terrifying our quacks

As GPs over Britain

Suffer Internet attacks:

"Doctor have a look at this

It's only twenty pages

I would have printed out the rest

But fear I'm in the stages

Of something fairly terminal

I've made a diagnosis

I found it on The Internet

I think it's psittacosis

Or mononucleosis

Or arteriosclerosis

I also know which drugs to use

And in what strength of doses."

The Internet. A doctor writes:

The symptoms are a queue

Of people in my waiting room

With sod all else to do

But ask me what I think they've got

Then tell me my mistakes

While reeling off prescriptions

Which the cyber-doctor makes

Regrettably the only cure

For this disease today

Or Chronic Cyberchondria,

As doctors like to say,

Apart from application

To your neck of tourniquet

Is log off from the website

Get a life and go away.

Don't Drink And Walk I read this week

And didn't quite know what to think

Of those pedestrians killed on roads

About a third had caned the drink

So what then, must the drinker do?

Get on the phone to call his wife

Explain he cannot leave the pub

As walking now endangers life?

Sedan chairs on a weekend night

Are few, or even none at all

So with these sombre facts in mind

In future he may have to crawl.

"Air-traffic partial sell-off." Oh?

So may we buy by vector?

There's one just over where I live

It's in the Clacton Sector.

An intersection of the air

With planes instead of cars

And on a very busy night

They blot out all the stars

A soul-less situation

Which suffuses me with rage

The sky is never silent

It's a hallmark of our age

And if I buy a chunk of sky

Which no-one else can use

A better-tempered poetry

Might grace the Weekly Muse