Verse Viagra

In Competition No. 2875 you were invited to submit a poem about an unlikely aphrodisiac. Thanks are due to that legend of the comping world Stanley J. Sharpless, whose ‘In Praise of Cocoa — Cupid’s Nightcap’ gave me the idea for this challenge.

How confessional your entries were, who can say, but I liked Adrienne Parker’s account of an erotic encounter with a washing machine. The winners take £25 each. The bonus fiver belongs to John Whitworth, who points out that, unlikely as it might seem, we have it on Shakespeare’s authority that the potato is an aphrodisiac.
 

Casanova loves potato.
Chips are what he gives his chick.
Though she be as chaste as Plato
Sizzling chips will do the trick.
 
What a rhizome, steal some, buy some,
Mother Nature’s passion fruit!
Guys from Cuba prize that tuber.
Senoritas dig that root.
 
Monks in cloisters swear by oysters.
Fatties crave a chocolate bar.
Horn of rhino? You and I know
Here’s a food that’s better far.
 
Slice ’em, mash ’em, dice ’em, smash ’em,
Spuds are just the stuff for ladies.
Cold as ice girls, far too nice girls —
Soon they’ll be as hot as Hades!
John Whitworth
 
If you’re no rouser, more a wilter,
Don’t look for aid from some quack philtre;
When the will itself is flaccid
It won’t be helped by magic acid;
It needs no rare exotic unction
To spark a passionate conjunction.
What makes a laggardly libido
As fired up as a primed torpedo
Is just to feed the dormant beast
With Nature’s raising agent — yeast.
As an extract in a jar
It’s Aphrodite’s avatar.
So lay past failure’s lowering ghost
By sharing Marmite on hot toast.
Its taste’s divisive, so they say,
But it unites us in this way.
W.J. Webster
 
When I first dated Gloria
I took her out to dine
In a funky little trattoria
With magic food & wine.
 
She ate and drank like Orson Welles
But after, at my flat,
Repelled all my seductive spells
By playing a dead bat.