Mercury spins closest to the sun,
light side burnt, dark side frozen.
Venus, goddess of love, lies
clouded in a mist of poison gas.
Earth’s green breathes oxygen and carbon,
each continent bathed by a blue ocean.
Mars, the red planet, lies dead,
arid desert, dry, cold and deserted.
Dust, debris, discarded sputniks,
asteroids, all together trace their orbits.
Jupiter, with a climate that is hardly hot,
nevertheless nurses a giant red spot.
Saturn, light enough to float, wears a ring
of gas and ice and spatial bling.
Uranus is another giant sphere
of chilling, lethal gas, or so we hear.
Neptune rides a misty darkened sea
with mermaids and sea nymphs for company.
Pluto, demoted now to a lump of ice,
guards still the gates that lead us to deep space.
Holst composed his Planets Suite,
so we can have our planet biscuit.
This galaxy is a cake bar
With a dark, molten, creamy core.
A mercurial message from the gods,
made to satisfy the goddess of love,
the colour of earth,
a reminder of Mars and a Milky Way,
eat too many and that belt will loosen,
by Jupiter a jovial stick of joy,
a saturnalian feast,
you’re in us, or in our stomachs now.
in tune with our desires, why not try a ton,
so far out, like Pluto.
If scientists are right in their theory,
the big bang created this Galaxy.
But so much word retrieval takes its toll.
Our poem has vanished in its own black hole.
Biscuit: McVitie’s Galaxy Cake Bars
Taste test: 8.1 out of 10
Cost: £1.30 from Asda in Totton
