In Competition No. 2467 you were invited to write a poem in which all the rhymes are eye-rhymes, not ear-rhymes.
Many years ago, even before Jaspistos cast his shadow on this page, a similar competition was set, with this difference: clerihews were demanded. Stuart Woods won with this:
If Johann Sebastian Bach
Had remembered to attach
Braces to his Levis
He wouldn’t have been so embarrassed while conducting a missa brevis.
Thirty years on ingenuity still rules OK. I especially liked the rhymes ‘Aristophanes’ and ‘planes’, and ‘intuit’ and ‘suit’. The standard was so high that I expect there will be disappointment among the near-winners. Console yourselves with the assurance that you were appreciated. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Adrian Fry, the only winner who avoided resorting to an ough rhyme.
If we were athletes, you’d be stood, victrix ludorum, on your plinth,
Leaving me to limp home ninth.
If poets, your bardic gifts would conjure feelings rich and strange.
I’d get stuck at rhyming ‘orange’.
If films, you’d be a blockbuster, all CGI and talking beasts.
I’d be a silent, scarcely known to cineasts.
If we were botanists, you’d get to name new species of anemone.
I would find none.
On holiday, you’d be at home in Biarritz, a sophisticated bather.
I’d be at Bognor in a lather.
If we were hell-raisers, you’d drink the whole damn pub under the table.
I’d be sick, probably on a constable.
You effortlessly have it all, but what is there to prove
While we have love?
Adrian Fry
When you go forth to play or eat
Observe the worth in this caveat:
Small dangers come from near and far,
Even at home you’re close to war;
For unseen hands hurt small and great,
No magic wands avert the threat.
Your loaf of bread beneath a bough,
With mug of mead, may prove too tough,
And, not a youth, alert and callow
Whose eager mouth knows how to swallow,
You may find food that caused you laughter
Stops breath and blood and brings you slaughter.
Yes, who can know what’s in the wind?
We must avow fate’s seldom kind.
You chat one moment — next, you’re dead;
O what a risky life we lead!
Frank Mc Donald
I well remember how Aunt Penelope
Conceived a passion for an antelope.
Her husband’s vigilant eye she duped
To rendezvous with the shy quadruped.
Conduct that is morally unstable —
It caused much comment here in Dunstable,
The thought of a lover in corvine shape
Partnering Auntie at an agape.
But their idyll was brief. As they sported through
The Kama Sutra, the Fates turned rough.
His suspicions raised in ascending ratio,
Uncle Fred spied the lovers entwined on the patio
Where, crazed by his wife’s delighted laughter,
He seized a large axe and engaged in slaughter.
At the trial, Fred claimed that his crime was venial;
But the jury didn’t accept his denial.
Sebastian Robinson
Now’s the day and now’s the hour —
Saturday and half-past four —
With the watchman grim and dour
On the battlements alone
Since the Scottish lords have gone
South, as Malcolm’s crowned at Scone.
Winter winds are fierce and rough,
Chilling him and blowing through
Crannied walls with wail and sough.
Here he pulls his sheepskins close
Round his shanks, his homespun hose,
Knows there’s nothing left to lose;
And, as storm clouds mass above
Dying trees from Birnam grove,
Spooked, he makes his final move.
G. McIlraith
I always write good poetry, although
To get it right is really, really tough.
I want the words I use to be my own.
I think of each one as I write it down.
They may not seem considered but they are,
The offspring of a lot of thought and care.
Unless you think with care of how you write
You cannot hope to be with the elite.
My writing tutor tells me I should lose
The traits that make my verse sound too like prose.
What does she mean by that? Does she not know
That when it comes to scanning I know how?
Does she not notice that my writing style’s
As thick as thieves with erudite similes?
She’s jealous of my genius, I’m afraid,
And genius is pain, John Lennon said.
Basil Ransome-Davies
The short eighteenth: my heart is all aquiver.
The match, though square, has been a comic tale,
And now, as we approach the grand finale,
I wonder why I ever risked my driver.
I should have ditched that disobedient wood;
It’s got me into trouble more than once.
Now, finding that I’m playing like some ponce,
No wonder I am in a rotten mood!
But here we are — a par should be enough.
My strike is sweet and true, the ball is low
And heading for the green, but veering now.
That hook developed late: it is as though
It wanted me to lose the lousy fiver
That’s in his hand. The ball? It’s in the river!
R. Monty Williams
No. 2470: Pagan prayer
You are invited to offer a votive (expressing a wish or vow) poem to a pre-Christian deity. Maximum 16 lines. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2470’ by 16 November.
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