The Invitational Week 153: Can You Just Imagine?
Tell us some events that 'happened' next year. Plus funny poems about other poems.
Pat Myers and Gene Weingarten
Dec 04, 2025

Magic Eight Ball, Outlook Not So Good Zip Pouch by Photo Researchers, Inc. - Science Source Prints
Magic Eight Ball, Outlook Not So Good Zip Pouch by Photo Researchers, Inc. - Science Source Prints
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Hello.

We’re approaching the end of the year, time to once again haul out our Prognostication Proclamation, in which we stop looking back and start looking forward, and you, the soothsayer, saith what happened next year.

This is scary territory. Consider, for example, last year’s winner, which proved kinda …. dead-on accurate:

Jan. 20, 2025: Democracy dies in darkness. (Jeff Contompasis)

In short, we persevere. We try to laugh.

Some other notable entries — less spot-on, thankfully — that inked last year :

An AI robot gains consciousness and decides to spend all its time watching porn online. (Art Grinath)

Pantone, in what many call obvious pandering, announces that its Color of the Year is “ketchup.” (Duncan Stevens)

Citing the practice’s “roots in this Nation’s historical tradition,” the Supreme Court affirms that Liz Cheney may be tried by throwing her in a pond stuffed in a burlap sack with a cat, while tied to a chair. (Steve Smith)

The Republican Congress passes a law to change Labor Day to Management Day. (Chris Doyle)

See Last year’s full results here.

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For Invitational Week 153: Tell us some humorous events that will “happen” in 2026, as in the examples above. Write them in present-tense sentences, not as headlines. Begin your entry with a particular date or month only if it’s relevant to the entry.

A reminder: We’ll be looking at your entries independently of one another; don’t write multiple entries as a long-form running joke.

Entry deadline is Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Dec. 18. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.

Formatting this week: It’s just our regular request to write each of your entries as an unbroken line; i.e., don’t push Enter until you’re starting the next entry.

Click here for this week’s entry form or go to tinyURL.com/inv-form-153.

This week’s winner receives a “Scream” finger puppet/fridge magnet, as in the Munch painting. We already gave out one of these babies last year, but you’ll agree we have a lot to be angstful for.



Fetal sonogram of the New Year 2026.
Meta-Verses: The poems on poems from Week 151
In Invitational Week 151 we asked you to write about a famous poem — a summary of it, a review, a comment — in your own rhyming poem.

The results this week were dauntingly plentiful and dauntingly good. Our final round of winnowing was heartbreaking; we sacrificed many excellent entries in favor of mega-excellent entries. One of your favorite poems to deconstruct was “The Raven,” but none made the final cut. Perversely, boldly, impertinently, one poem that did get ink was not about “The Raven,” but was written with its cadence and rhyme scheme. It was about a different poem altogether.

(Click on the titles below for links to the original poems.)

Third runner-up:
Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too by Shel Silverstein
Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too,
Children love its absurdity, yep!
Just be glad that the -stein guy from whose mind it grew
Was Shel Silver- and not Jeffrey Ep-. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

Second runner-up:

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus
You tired, poor, and huddled masses?
Sorry, we’re now run by asses.
(David Peckarsky, Tucson, Ariz.)

First runner-up:
Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost
I have been one acquainted with the night:
The 4 a.m. despair; the joyless moon;
The term paper — ten pages — I must write
On Frost. I’m on Page 2. It’s due at noon.
(Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.)

And the winner of the car headrest covers with funny faces:
The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman, performed at Biden’s inauguration
Inaugural! A sunny winter’s day,
The poet stood up straight and proud to say,
“For justice, we’ve a long, long way to go,
But, dedicated, let us make it so.”
The voters met her challenge with a shrug
And wrote a poem called “The Pit We Dug.”
(Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

And the Gene Pool Invitational Gene Poll:

POLL
Which of the poems above did you like best?
Third RU: Tickle Me
Second RU: New Colossus
First RU: The Night
The winner: The Pit We Dug
313 VOTES · 1 DAY REMAINING
(As usual, if you think others were better, yell at us in the Comments.)

Leave a comment

Bardy Poopers: Honorable mentions
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
Once upon a mealtime fleeting, just as I sat down for eating,
Over a meal of tasty morsels cooked in ways that I adore —
Suddenly I heard a braying; “Sam-I-am!” this pest was saying,
Urging fare he warranted would surely make my taste buds soar.
“Try green eggs and ham!” he nattered, but I let him say no more —
“’Tis a dish that I abhor.” (Mark Raffman)

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
They did not question why, just bucked up
And died because the army fucked up.
(Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)

The Encounter by Louise Glück
If you’d like to rehearse
Penning steamy free verse,
Read this prelude to coitus
By a Nobel Prize poetess.
(Chris Doyle, Warminster, Pa.)

Holy Sonnets: Death, Be Not Proud by John Donne
Death’s just a loser, so don’t be distressed
Although it be for thee they toll that bell;
Eternal life’s the sweetest and the best!
(But maybe not if thou art bound for Hell.)
(Ann Martin, Brentwood, Md.)

If— by Rudyard Kipling
Be humble and forgiving, never blame,
Be strong enough to fend off all attacks.
Treat triumph and disaster just the same,
And have in spades what most of mankind lacks.
Lose everything? Start fresh where you began.
Be stoic, never grumble, never fret.
If this is what it takes to be a man,
Then, I must say, I haven’t met one yet.
(Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)

There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale
If mankind blew itself to bits
The robins wouldn’t give two shits.
(Jonathan Jensen)

Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
He scorned the first two pitches,
Complaining about “style”;
Then down to one, he finally swung
And missed it by a mile.
But Casey wasn’t joyless:
He knew the odds they’d set;
And FanDuel paid what Casey made
By winning his prop bet.
(Jim Burger, Chadds Ford, Pa., a First Offender)

Jack Sprat
When the Sprats had their first dinner date,
He ordered a fat-free burrito.
She said “Oh, that’s great. We won’t fight over food,
Because I am primarily keto.”
(Judy Freed, Philadelphia)

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
The moon was a ghostly galleon floating on purple prose,
As the highwayman’s ebony stallion charged along hedgy rows.
He rode to meet his lover whose eyes were sable as ink.
Is this a bodice-ripper,
A real bodice-ripper?
Yes, it’s a bodice-ripper, but not in the manner you think.

For the landlord’s black-eyed daughter shot herself through the chest,
And the redcoats shot her lover, which you probably already guessed.
Did I mention that there would be spoilers, that our heroes all end up dead?
I’m sure I mentioned spoilers—
I must have mentioned spoilers,
If I didn’t mention spoilers, oops, I probably ought to have said.
(Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park, Md.)

To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
A lusty lad who’s hot to trot
Implores a lass (who’s clearly not)
To skip the slow formalities
And think of their mortalities!
“Why fiddle-faddle with romance?
Tempus fugit — shed your pants!”
(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth
When I run out of Prozac pills
I like to watch the daffodils.
(Marshall Begel, Madison, Wis.)

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I used to think I understood that verse
By Shelley, all about the fallen statue:
The grindstone, Time, for better or for worse,
Turns all your deeds to dust to fling back at you.
So empires rise and fall, and are replaced;
Those truths of old are just as true today.
What’s feared by some, by others is embraced,

Can they but read the rhyme a different way.
All bombast, haughty taunts, and petty hate,
Each hand that mocks, each sneer of cold command,
Will in due time meet that old statue’s fate:
Be toppled, to be buried neath the sand.
A caution against pride, I’d thought, but nope —
To read it in these times, it gives me hope.
(Brendan Beary)

The Charge of the Light Brigade
The men who rode their steeds and died
While facing foes were glorified.
We now send drones to heed the call
When Hegseth orders: “kill them all.” (Chris Doyle)

Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways ...
I made it to eleventeen. Can’t raise
It higher — now you’ve led me up the path
The promise was that there would be no math.
(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

Humpty Dumpty
Concerning the Humpty Dumpty fall,
We have some loose ends to tie.
Like how could an ovoid NOT roll off a wall?
Did he climb up there to die?
And as for all the king’s horses,
Are any of them an MD? If not,
Why summon them or the armed forces?
Instead, fetch a cook, some salt, and a pot.
(Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)

The New Colossus
A New Plaque for Lady Liberty
Give me your so-unfairly treated poor
White South Africans yearning to breathe free!
The rest of you, stay on your own shore;
This land is for Americans, not thee —
Unless, that is, you have millions to invest,
Speak English, and live in preferred regions.
Just a quick wire transfer — you’re our honored guest!
(We have a special fondness for Norwegians.)
(Pam Shermeyer)

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
The night is fair
So we’re in luck
The sea is calm
But people suck.
(Jonathan Paul)

When I Was One-and-Twenty by A.E. Housman
When I was one-and-twenty
An old man, all bereft,
Said, “Here’s the key to happiness:
Just keep on swiping left.”
(Brendan Beary)

Upon Julia’s Clothes by Robert Herrick
I like it when my Julia’s tush
Makes her skirt go swoosh-swish-swoosh! (Jonathan Paul)

The Betrothal by Edna St. Vincent Millay
The bloom is off the rose — in fact,
It’s down to its last petal.
This guy is not the one she wants,
But what the hell, she’ll settle. (Brendan Beary)

To a Daughter Leaving Home by Linda Pastan
You learned riding bikes without having a spill; you
Elicited from me a bittersweet smile.
You’ve grown up now, darling — and yet would it kill you
To visit your mother just once in a while?
(Brendan Beary)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
While walking to your wedding feast, I heard a tale absurd.
This sailor shot an albatross. His mates gave him the bird.
Somehow this action caused him to be plagued with many curses.
The guy kept droning on and on — about six hundred verses.
(Michael Stein, Arlington, Va.)

“Hope” Is the Thing With Feathers by Emily Dickinson
Higgledy piggledy,
Emily Dickinson
Wrote of a thing that has
Feathers—it’s hope.
(If you were thinking that
It was a sex toy for
Aphrodisiacal
Tickling, nope.) (Jesse Frankovich)

Howl by Allen Ginsberg
His generation’s “best minds” trashed?
He put it out there, unabashed.
With words like “snatch” and “ass” and “cock,”
The bourgeois world he meant to shock.
So: avant-garde, or just bizarre?
I couldn’t say. (TL;DR)
(Mark Raffman)

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
What’s “brillig,” or a “slithy tove”? They’re meant to be amusing,
Yet nonsense words can’t sanitize this tale of foul abusing,
The killing of a jabberwock, viewed through a modern prism,
Is not something to celebrate; it reeks of species-ism. (Mark Raffman)

My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun (Sonnet 130), by William Shakespeare
Dull eyes, bad hair, a so-so body —
He’s in love, but she’s no hottie. (Brendan Beary)

The headline “Meta-Verses” was submitted by both Matt Monitto and Tom Witte; Jesse Frankovich wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline Saturday, Dec. 6, at 9 p.m. ET: Our contest to write a sentence containing a fresh, funny simile. Click below for the details.

InvisibleInk!
Idea: ()
Examples: (Jeff Contompasis; Art Grinath; Duncan Stevens; Steve Smith; Chris
Doyle)
Judging: ()
Title: (Matt Monito; Tom Witte)
Subhead: (Jesse Frankovich)
Prize: ()
Add:H:1588: ()
VisibleInk!