Spooner verse

In Competition No. 2869 you were invited to submit a poem on any theme as it might have been written by the diminutive, myopic warden of New College, Oxford Revd W.A. Spooner, whose gift for mangling words bequeathed us such comic gems as ‘The Lord is a shoving leopard’.

Not everyone was laughing, though. ‘Am I the only one who finds this exercise extraordinarily difficult?’ wailed Brian Murdoch. He’s got a point. Judging the entries was a brain-addling process, so goodness knows what torture it must have been to write them. The winners take a well deserved £25 each. Sylvia Fairley snaffles £30.
 

Send my abandoned tart to hell
In flames, my fuel crate;
The witch I’m bedding sent a note,
A catalogue of hate.
 
What balm can ever tease my ears?
(I need to know my blows…)
She says she’ll book my calls for tea,
I’d rather lose my toes.
 
I’ve ‘wooed her with a lack of pies’?
‘A shining wit!’ she said,
‘Why don’t I go to Bates Motel
And shake a tower instead?’
 
No woman now will heal my start,
I’ve flung out hags — a warning
That girls, like words, are found to buck
Me up; the truth is dawning.
Sylvia Fairley
 
I could be buying in lead, but no,
The dizzy beauties of the day
Prevail. No time to kill and boo
Or kiss, to whelp me on my hay.
 
I put the radio on: today’s
Stop Tories on the BBC.
I shower and dress — tight lie for once;
A tasty piece of host, and tea.
 
I heave the louse, my nosy cook,
And then, as ever, fart to steer:
Did I forget to dock the law?
To lack my punch? Relief: it’s here.
 
It’s raining now. I join the fey
And graceless, as the pain now roars.
The warring burqas wait. A crane
Trawls in. We mind the dozing claws.
Nicholas Hodgson
 
While putting the lawnmower shack in the bed,
I observed that the door had become rather creaky.