Mind your language | 26 April 2018

In Competition No. 3045 you were invited to provide a poem about euphemisms.
 
You avoided politics and sex (mostly), preferring instead to focus on the language of dying and the words and expressions that enable us to sidestep the D-word (according to David Crystal, there are more than 1,000 words for death categorised in the Historical Thesaurus). I much admired Alanna Blake’s twist on Keats’s sonnet (‘Much have I dabbled in linguistic lore/ And many inexactitudes have used…’) and Max Ross’s neat acrostic. Hamish Wilson, Max Gutmann, Ann Drysdale and David Silverman also deserve a special mention. The prizewinners printed below earn £30 each. The extra fiver belongs to Bill Greenwell.

‘Fair maiden, may I introduce my fritz,
My percy, and my python, also peg?
It’s from my nether regions’ naughty bits:
My trouser snake, my meat and middle leg.
 
‘I haven’t got a wrinkle in my winkle,
My johnson, rod and pole, my horse and hose —
My harry likes to have a little tinkle,
Or hang out with my other down-belows.
 
‘Do talk to him, my cecil and my pecker,
And tell him he’s your favourite tom and dick,
My Black and Decker, oh my Boris Becker —
My well-hung whatsit and my Hampton Wick!’
 
‘Be candid, sir — to what do you allude?
Why must you all decorum so defy?’
‘Oh miss, I couldn’t. Not that I’m a prude —
It’s simply, to be frank, I’m far too shy.’
Bill Greenwell
 
 
Because I would not speak of Death
I thought he would not call —
That hearing words of gentler worth
His interest would pall.
 
But he popped up and tipped his hat
And said, ‘I’m here at last —
I’d stopped to pay my due respects
To one you’d say had passed.’
 
Then he spoke of farms that he’d bought —
Of clogs that he’d seen popped —
And I joined in with buckets kicked —
The laughter barely stopped.
 
We passed the time so carelessly
On those that we had lost —
That I had scarcely time to see —
That over I had crossed.