For many years I’ve lead a double life,
Secretly, and illegally, supporting more than just one wife.
In England I have Sheila, she’s dependable and mild
But in Switzerland I’ve Lola, who’s exciting, young and wild.
I work at CERN, a scientist on the Large Hadron Collider.
But, I do my best to make each feel there’s nothing that’s denied her.
Like a helium atom, I’ve two electrons spinning ‘round my nucleus,
In life I think the Standard Model is something rather dubious.
The moral objection seems purely theoretical,
It may be a crime, but I don’t think it’s so heretical.
I love them both, in different ways, and I’m sure that they’re not harmed,
Like a quark, I can be up, down, bottom, top and definitely charmed.
My relationships don’t conform to Newtonian Mechanics,
What should be interpersonal, is more fun with group dynamics.
Sheila’s my Magnetic Monopole, predictable and stable,
Maintaining domesticity, she’s dull but competently able.
But Lola gets my particles accelerating, she’s mysterious Dark Matter,
I was drawn to her Graviton and Electromagnetism chatter.
Living with Sheila is a warm cosy fire, whereas Lola’s reaction is fission,
Keeping them happy, but always apart is increasingly my life’s main mission.
For if they were to meet and combine in some way,
The result would be combustive it’s easy to say.
Forget Einstein’s predictions on energy release,
This bang would be bigger, I might lose all my teeth.
For I can predict Nature’s cycles and rhythms and turns,
I can explain the sun’s workings and how hydrogen burns.
I can calculate geometry and planetary alignment,
I’m just not so sure what that look in her eyes meant.
I can theorise formulae, and particle phenomenology,
But I can’t tell the right time, to make an apology.
I’m not scared of black holes or other dimensions,
It’s Sheila and Lola that give me apprehensions.
Perhaps now’s the time to rethink my experiment,
I predict a bad ending to this ongoing merriment.
Maybe a new job, painter, mechanic or pianist,
It’s far too tricky, I’ve found, being a bigamist physicist.
Chris Hughes