LIZ THE TERRIBLE

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Liz Truss is Brits' prime minister du jour.

Inquiry's overrated in her book.

Zetetic minds were offered Liz's cure—

The Trussonomic leap before you look.

How Kwasi's top-rate tax cut tanked the pound

Escaped her, since she didn't do the sums

That would have shown her growth plan was unsound—

Except for Liz The Terrible's rich chums.

Research on trickle-down had long debunked

R. Reagan's fantasy. Though not for Liz.

In Economics One-Oh-One, she flunked,

Believing if you just say growth, growth is...

Liz did not last: her hare-brained stratagem

Exemplified how not to be PM!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, The Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, The Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

GROWTH IN PARTY UNITY

by Jerome Betts

Available from RedMolotov

Liz Truss has attempted to unite her party around a common enemy of the “anti-growth coalition” of unions, remainers and green campaigners… —The Guardian, 5 October 2022

Inspired by some words from Liz T.

And her mantra of ‘Growth’, triple G,

    Green, Lib Dem and Labour

    Can now nod to a neighbour

 Enrolled in the new AGC!

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up Online. His work has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web publications such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Asses of Parnassus, Better Than Starbucks, The Hypertexts, Light, The New Verse News, and Snakeskin.

LIZ’S FIRST DAY

by Annie Cowell

In an overcast Scottish sky, a plane circles

like a call on hold, carrying a lady in waiting.

Below, at Balmoral, the self proclaimed 

booster rocket splashes out. 

It is unlikely we will see photos 

of him ploughing. A chorus of low thunder 

fills the short interval before the Queen 

offers her hand for the fifteenth time. 

The kiss is symbolic.

Instead, a small handshake suffices

to greet the latest Prime Minster. 

She bears the same moniker, but 

unlike Elizabeth, she uses the diminutive.

Liz. 

She promises to deliver a better future,

to be like Hera, protector of children.

Yet I wonder if that night, as she closed the door

on the first day of her government

whether she held her breath and listened

for noises in the street?

Or did she simply kiss her children 

good night 

and toddle off to bed?

Annie Cowell is a former teacher who lives by the sea in Cyprus with her husband and rescue dogs. She is widely published in Popshot Quarterly, The Milk House, Paddler Press, and more. Her debut chapbook Birth Mote(s) is now available.

POISON PIXELS

by Jerome Betts

Dominic Cummings, sacked special adviser to Boris Johnson, has been releasing embarrassing WhatsApp

messages exchanged with his former employer. Cartoon by Howard McWilliam.

Internal emails, swift to write, 

Whose speed can spread more heat than light

And tempt a PM in too deep

With words the media used to bleep,

You cheer us when we note with glee. 

His post in peril from D.C.

 

O linen stained with dog-eat-doggery

Put on display in public bloggery,

May you prove fatal in the end

To both buffoon and faithless friend

So evermore we shall be free

Of  Tweedle B. and Tweedle D.

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up On Line. His work has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web publications such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Asses of Parnassus, Better Than Starbucks, The Hypertexts, Light, The New Verse News, and Snakeskin.

POT AND KETTLE

by Jerome Betts

Safety first: the many hats of George Osborne. Composite: Rex/Getty via The Guardian, June 5, 2016.

“Welfare for Osborne was just a bottomless pit of savings, and it didn’t really matter what the human consequences were, because focus groups had shown that the voters they wanted to appeal to were very anti-welfare . . . “ —Nick Clegg in a Guardian interview 2 Sept 2016.

“Like the Living Dead in a second-rate horror film, the premiership of Theresa May staggers on oblivious.” —Editorial in London Evening Standard edited by George Osborne, 31 August 2017.


Hard hat on head, photographers on hand,
He knew to whom this image most appeals.
Disabled? Jobless? A negligible band,
Their money useful, though, to grease his wheels.

Cold-bloodedly, the snake, now scotched, not killed,
Still slithers towards its overarching goal,
A prospect leaving half a nation chilled,
The pitiless George Osborne in control.

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. His verse has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web venues such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Angle, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Light, Parody, Per Contra, TheNewVerse.News, The Rotary Dial and Snakeskin.

QUESTION TIME

by Jerome Betts

Theresa May Caricature by Masakonen

T. M. still PM? Why is this?
The leader Fortune gave a miss
A faded star that’s on the blink,
A stock which now can only sink,
A Premier who’s lost the plot,
Majority and trust, the lot,
But carries on, a headless hen,
Behind the door of Number Ten?

Not hard, perhaps, to read the runes.
The five-watt bulbs and weird buffoons
The Tories muster to compete
To win her hot and thorn-strewn seat
Prefer to leave the Brexit folly
To blow up on some other wally,
And so until that dismal day
We’re stuck with hopeless hapless May.

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up On Line. His verse has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web venues such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Angle, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Light,  Per Contra, TheNewVerse.News, The Rotary Dial and Snakeskin.

THE VERDICT OF TIME?

by Jerome Betts

Image source: Mcbill’s illustration blog

As round the Hall of Fame I daily wander,
O shades of PMs past, you too are there
With legacies displayed for all to ponder −
Pitt, Peel, and Gladstone, Lloyd-George, Blair,
Disraeli, Thatcher, Attlee, Baldwin, Brown,
The bright, the dim, the strong or puny’uns –
But none so dire as Cameron, the clown
Who gambled, lost, and risked two unions.

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England. His verse has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web venues such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Angle, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Light, Lighten Up Online, which he now edits, TheNewVerse.News, Per Contra, The Rotary Dial and Snakeskin.