Today’s it’s World Day Day,
A special day to mark
Our Earth’s diurnal round,
To honour the quotidien
Where everyone can celebrate
By getting Twenty-foury!
Make 24 new friends,
Plant 24 new trees,
Dream 24 fresh plans,
Earn 24 more scars
Although sadly, from Victoria
In Australia
Via Vienna to Valparaiso,
The celebrations, on the hour,
The kids’ events, each minute,
And the son et lumieres at dawn and dusk
Have all had to be cancelled
Due to Covid
Plus, to be honest,
Complete worldwide indifference.
It’s fared better though
Than the International
Month of the Month,
Whose organising committee,
Made up of
Chronologists, astrologers and
Calendar printers from all the nations
Convening in Tblisi,
Once they’d voted down
The motion to rebrand it all
As a Memorial Month for Menstruation,
Proceeded to break up into factions,
The Thirtyites screaming imprecations
At their Thirty-Oner foes
Before a tiny splinter group of
Twenty-Eightist terrorists planted bombs
And slew their now all-male, blue-suited
Fellow delegates and now,
Ironically, after they’d stormed
The Palais de la Paix,
Still languishing through more uncounted months
In a desert prison camp
While their respective Governments
Wrangle an agreement
On the charges to be laid.
Happily the United Nations’ Year Year
To honour the affrighted globe’s
Annual orbit round our fiery sun,
Swinging round in never ending circles
Like a sick and drugged-up wombat on a leash,
Has gone ahead as planned,
With some obvious curtailment
Due to Covid.
Though frankly, the joy’s drained from it,
Even from the ferocity of adherents
To various faiths’ alternative New Years
So when a family street party up in Bergen,
Though unlicenced, had sought
To join in the official fun
But just got tear-gassed by the cops instead
No one,
Not even the most bat-shit crazy libertarian
Cared less.
Indeed, hiding masked inside out homes
Almost all of us agreed
The earnest nerds
Deserved it.