Past regrets

In Competition No. 2778 you were invited to express your regret, in verse, for New Year’s resolutions not kept.

The challenge produced an entertaining outpouring of contrition. I enjoyed John MacRitchie’s twist on the Frank Sinatra classic: ‘I’ve packed my case too full,/ Made dreadful curries, in a Thai way,/ Each year, my diets flop,/ Who cares what I weigh?’ Commendations, and commiserations, to unlucky losers Juliet Walker, Tim Raikes, Mae Scanlan, Douglas G. Brown, Jayne Osborn and G.W. Tapper. The winners, below, get £25 each. Top prize goes to Brian Allgar, who pockets the extra fiver.

Happy New Year!
 

I swore I’d give up sex and saturnalia;
That was my optimistic resolution.
So no more ‘escorts’ (farewell, Chloë, Thalia) —
A euphemistic term for prostitution.
No steamy vice, no lurid bacchanalia;
I’d join the straight-and-narrow revolution;
I’d throw away my S & M regalia,
And purify my vicious constitution.
I’d smoke no more; my teeth were growing scalier
And yellower from nicotine pollution.
I’d tend my garden, prune my white azalea;
My life would be impeccably Confucian.
 
I might as well have tried to eat Australia;
I broke each vow, preferring dissolution.
But this year, there’ll be no such moral failure —
I’m quite resolved to make no resolution.
Brian Allgar

 
One year I vowed to give up kinky sex,
But failed because my squeeze (alas, now ex)
Was keen on fifty shades of how’s-your-father,
So back it was to whips, KY and lather.
The next I said I’d give up drugs for good
To be the straighthead of the neighbourhood.
They’re harmful and expensive: what’s the point?
I lasted till my sister passed the joint.
Two epic fails behind me, I forswore
Inebriation. I would drink no more,
Yet soon relapsed to getting pissed with mother
(We’ve always meant so much to one another.)
These New Year’s resolutions — I don’t know,
They only seem to bring regret and woe.