The Factoid Multi-Universe

He has been struck by lightning, the unfortunate postilion,
As scorch marks on his skull and feet indubitably show.
Poor Albert Trott once struck a ball clean over Lord’s pavilion;
No one has yet repeated this unprecedented blow.
In seconds (twenty billion to the power of twenty billion)
Vile entropy will put a stop to everything we know.
           The General Good is not the same as what is good for all.
           The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding small.

Praise-God MacArthur got the dumb bum’s rush from Harry Truman.
The world, said Wittgenstein, is everything that is the case.
All dragons, snakes and crocodiles fall prey to the ichneumon;
They flee in fear and trembling if they meet him face to face.
I heard it on the grapevine, Elvis Presley was a woman;
That premise granted, many other facts fall into place.
           I’ve quite forgotten where it was I heard it or I read it.
           Some stories have the ring of truth and some you’d barely credit.

Black holes are the invention of Professor Stephen Hawking;
The good Lord knows (and no one else) what sort of bill they fill.
Some say God’s not a gambler but it’s just the whisky talking;
When the Devil drives the tumbrel let the cards fall where they will.
If your name is Long John Silver you must change your way of walking
Down that crowd-compelling platform where they take the Train for Ill.
          There are facts and there are factoids, there is can and there is can’t.
          There are things you wish were true but they unfortunately aren’t.

Why did Gustav Holst equate the horrid Jupiter with jollity—
That double-dealing rapist with his lack of self-control?
Have the Ministers and Elders of the Presbyterian polity
Allotted every sin to its concordant pigeonhole?
Does the world consists of monads, which, though differing in quality,
Are infinite in number and possess their share of soul?
          The Mover of the Cosmos is a monkey in a suit.
          There’s an information overload; these files do not compute.

You can scry it in the crystal, you can taste it in the water,
You can spell it in the tea-leaves, you can sniff it in the smoke.
Cut out this booze and buggery, invest in bricks and mortar;
A wife and child is what you need to stop you going broke.
Our life is short, the poet says, and yours is getting shorter;
Just what will you have done, my son, before you bloody croak?
          The truth is as we say it is. In God we place our trust.
          Don’t meddle. Things could swiftly go spectacularly bust.