Some papers try to get our attention

with headlines addressing our worries

about our ageing health that mention

all kinds of scary medical flurries

of news about the latest findings

that play upon our fears for the future:

arthritis, heart attacks, dementia

and the dreaded Big C - cancer.

So pity the harrassed poor sub-editor

who has to come up with something catchy

to grab the interest of the reader

and please a boss who's probably tetchy.

One day the headline to cap them all

I'm sure will happen by and by

in letters several inches tall -

'EVERYONE'S  GOING  TO  DIE'

Heaven was a very tempting idea

to raise the dead in some sort of form.

Hell was invented to instill fear

and make the living conform.

Un-Donne

If ever any beauty I did see

which I desired but didn't get, it's usually

because she's quite a few decades too young for me.

The times thay aren't a-changing

"bread and cicuses" used to please the population

so human nature hasn't changed except in expectation

of over-priced takeaway pizza in place of bread

and 24/7 TV for the almost brain dead.

The Graduate

"Plastics, my boy ! that's the thing for the future.

Get into plastics. You'll make a bomb."

But he couldn't imagine the medical bombshell

that microplastics would get into you,

your lungs and your blood as research has now shown.

Convenience profits, effects unknown.

Women take enormous care

to hide their genitals from men.

Quite unnecessary when

there's little to see but a streak of hair.

 My house is full of embarrassing failures -

instruments I never learned to play,

seeds that failed to germinate,

books bought but not read,

plants that died

and me.