In Competition No. 2433 you were asked for a poem in which each line’s rhymed ending is a truncated word.
When I’ve a syllable de trop,
I cut it off without apol:
This verbal sacrifice, I know,
May irritate the schol;
But all must praise my devilish cunn
Who realise that Time is Mon.
This verse from ‘Poetical Economy’ suggests that its author, Harry Graham, writing in the 1930s, was the inventor of this game, one which you played with brio.
The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Alan Millard, whose splendid final rhyme tickled me pink.
I’ve never had a pretty bod
And so I visited the doc’s
And asked him for a body mod
To make me fit the norm, approx.
My genes were handed down from ma
Who, sadly, was no beauty ad,
I’d much prefer to look like pa:
Refined in spite of being trad.
The doc said, ‘I’ll refer you, Ron,
And send you to the fix-it lab!’
I hoped it wasn’t just a con
And even dreamt I’d turn out fab.
The end result was hardly brill
As witnessed by the surgeon’s memo:
‘Couldn’t make him look a mill.
Best not use him as a demo!’
Alan Millard
Some might regard as econom
This innovatory phenom
And swear we’d soon become famil
With chopping off that final syll,
But verbalised appendicect
Gives me no feelings of delect
Nor could it help the lexicog
To face destruction of orthog.
The tricky process of versif
Would probably be just as diff –
Curtailment’s not a path Apoll
Encouraged loyal bards to foll.
Who’d rank cacophonous abbrev
Among mankind’s supreme achiev?
I shall react with loud abhorr
If people say, ‘See you tomorr!’
Godfrey Bullard
I never was much good at crick:
I only seemed to wield my will
In order to protect my wick;
‘Risk nothing!’ was my batting phil.
I bowled a bit like Boycott’s gran –
The dolly and the daisy-cut;
My fielding wasn’t up to stan,
My catching fingers seemed all but.
With such an unimpressive rec,
Besides a very average ave,
I found myself non-playing Sec,
Confined to watching from the pav.
With the fixtures to fix and the meetings to min,
I was praised for my work in the field of liais.
But what they dutifully clapped at the Annual Din
Were the ashes of dreams of a bloke in a blaze.
W.J. Webster
His manuscript was pure Eng. Lit,
And friends said absolutely brill.
Such racy writing from a Brit!
Sure, his advance would be a mill.
A lifetime’s work, his magnum op,
A weighty and impressive vol;
Through word of mouth and by vox pop
His sales would fund a foreign hol
And house as lived in by execs –
Detached, four-bedded, two receps.
His publishers (dull chaps in specs)
Would need a multitude of reps.
A girlfriend got it on the Beeb;
Alas, the critics were derog,
And damned the plot as pretty feeb,
All in two minutes’ worth of prog.
D.A. Prince
Retirement looms: I face the prob
Of needing to acquire a hob;
You see, I’m not disposed to leis
Nor given to a life of pleas,
Cannot abide cricket or rugg —
In fact, I’m quite a boring bugg.
In theory, I might take up gard
To stop the arteries from hard,
Though growing stuff is pretty diff —
I’d plant a rose and get a triff!
At DIY I’ve been unluck,
The antithesis of Barry Buck;
My conversation doesn’t scint
And no way would I surf the int.
The wife, now utterly exasp,
Sighs, ‘Just keep sending comps to Jasp.’
Mike Morrison
One morning in a physics lab
A learned PhD (Cantab)
— I can’t remember from which coll —
Was studying a massive vol
And said, ‘Hey, this is quite delic.
I’ve just discovered nuclear fiss!’
He dined that evening, then, post-prand,
Worked out a modus operand,
And all the necessary preps
To manufacture nuclear weaps.
Just think! Ten hours, maybe elev,
Of brilliant research-and-dev
Gave a result of such great beaut
That human life has no more fut.
Brian Murdoch
No. 2436: Studied insults
As Max Beerbohm observed, it is harder to write a very rude letter than a very polite one. You are invited to supply an example of the former in which the writer terminates the services of an employee, tradesman or professional man. Maximum 150 words. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2436’ by 23 March.
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