In Competition No. 2622 you were invited to submit a rhymed curse penned by a motorist on a cyclist, a cyclist on a pedestrian or a pedestrian on either.
Reading the entry brought to mind a question once posed by Matthew Parris: ‘Does cycling turn you into an insolent jerk?’ ‘You bet it does!’ came the semi-unanimous chorus. A bracing stream of vitriol was directed mostly at cyclists, especially those who wear Lycra, though I no doubt let motorists off lightly by not giving the cycling brigade the opportunity to respond in kind to their fellow road-users.
While Brian Murdoch, Basil Ransome-Davies, Paul Griffin and Martin Elster were unlucky losers, this week’s king of the road is D.A. Prince, who nabs the bonus fiver. The other winners, printed below, earn £25 apiece.
May he who rides unlit at night
On pavements in the dark
Ignite into a blazing streak
Of scorching fire and spark;
May all his joints be turning,
From head down to his heel,
In cycles of eternal pain —
Perpetual Catherine Wheel;
May he who never troubles
To sound his warning bell
Be maddened, tortured, deafened,
With tinnitus of Hell.
And may his barbed wire saddle
Be welded to his soul,
While walkers stoke the fires
With everlasting coal.
D.A. Prince
A curse upon your father, and a curse upon
your mother,
O you who cannot put a simple foot before
another,
Who wears a smile as if your mouth contained
unmelted butter,
And vacuously pads between the pavement and
the gutter.
May each white plug inside your ear turn into
wax or foam.
May all your tunes be wiped by magnets on
your way back home.
When you are old, may you stand rigid, like a
rusted tripod,
To punish you for wandering while listening to
your iPod.
And since you stray into my wheels because
your thumbs are texting,
I offer you a heartfelt uish to add to one great
exting-.
I hope that you expire in a pool, a pond or
midden,
And hear the squeal of tyres, very elegantly
ridden —
The rubber round the wheels into which you
push with shins and knees.
Please die, you foul pedestrian, of some
unknown disease,
And when you come before your God with
angels in his train,
Let Him present you with a broken pedal and a
chain.
Bill Greenwell
Your rank emissions foul the air.
Your horn is an infernal blare.
Your wheels seek puddles where they lurk
To splash me as I walk to work.
May rust consume your glossy pride.
May failed suspension make the ride
So bumpy that your kidneys bleed.
May bills for your repairs exceed
The income of ten oil sheikhs.
May you be plagued by faulty brakes,
And thus rear-end a panda car
While smelling like a rum-soaked tar.
Then, when the law has brought you low,
And you, like me, afoot must go,
May every motorist in town
Be of your ilk and run you down.
Chris O’Carroll
The ghosts of my pedestrian forebears,
flattened by your heedless wheels,
ask me to remind each driver
how the roadkill hedgehog feels —
‘May your brakes completely fail you,
punctures punctuate each trip,
Road tax treble, wardens plague you.
pistons seize and clutches slip.
And may your steering wheels lock solid
as each lorry and its load
comes towards you doing ninety
on the wrong side of the road.
But may you live just long enough
to realise that their screaming wheels
have done to you what you have done
to us — before your blood congeals.’
Martin Parker
You think because your butt is on a bike
That you’re exempt from playing by the rules.
Well, let me tell you something you won’t like:
You’re sailing, buddy, on a ship of fools.
I curse you while you pedal, unaware
As drivers slam their brakes on to avoid you.
I curse your nonchalant and cocky air
Which seems to say that, somehow, we’ve
annoyed you.
You slither in and out of lanes capriciously,
While those behind their wheels are gnashing
teeth.
The devil take you! as you zip perniciously
Beside, astride, above, betwixt, beneath.
I cast an evil eye, and put a hex
On all you brash, impertinent young cyclists.
Whate’er may be your colour, creed, or sex,
You’re at the top of drivers’ do-not-like lists.
Mae Scanlan
No. 2625: Dear John
You are invited to submit a poem in praise of any well-known John (this can be a real person, living or dead, or a character from literature: 16 lines maximum). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk. by midday on 2 December.
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