[Roger Slater]

Catullus #5

Let's kiss a hundred zillion times
But not be overzealous
Adding up the final count
Lest lonesome men grow jealous.

[Jayne Osborn]

Posts #58 and 59 are very good, Marion and Roger.

You two must surely win prizes in this comp! As I said earlier, though, how are you going to pick just three to submit, when you've got so many good 'uns?

Use a friend's name and address, perhaps? (I bet that's often done.)

Jayne

[Marion Shore]

I have eaten the plums
you were probably saving.
I know I'm a bum
but I had such a craving.

[Brian Allgar]

A friend's name and address works, although an anagrammatic pseudonym is perhaps more elegant. I've only managed it once, but I seem to remember that, years ago, "Will Bellenger" cropped up from time to time. (I leave you to work out who that was; it's quite easy once you realize that it can't have been Basil Ransome-Davies.)

[Roger Slater]

Adam and Eve
had it made in the shade
and but for that apple
the two could have stayed.

[Roger Slater]

Let us go then, you and I.
Let’s both of us get down
with mermaid song till human voices
wake us and we drown.

[Jayne Osborn]

I seem to remember that, years ago, "Will Bellenger" cropped up from time to time.

It did indeed, Brian, and 'our Bill'... Oops, silly me, I've gone and spilled the beans...

Now that I've ruined the mystery (but saved people having to work out the anagram), I can add that Bill (Greenwell) had no part in the 'Will Bellenger' thing. Here's a quote from his foreword in the truly marvellous 'An Owl in a Sack Troubles No Man' book of New Statesman winning entries (from way back):

Pseudonymity is admittedly rife. Some achieve soubriquets, others have them thrust upon them (one Friday I awoke to find that my name had been scrambled into Will Bellenger; on another occasion, I'd been redesignated Lew Bellringle.)

Jayne

[Roger Slater]

I'm not just a taker.
I'm also a giver.
I've eaten the plums
but I've left you the liver.

[Brendan Beary]

Oldys:
Each life's too short, each life's too bleak --
Some sixty years, some just a week.
Eat, drink, be merry; please don't wail,
"Oh bugger -- a bug got in my ale!"

Frost:
Two roads diverged.
I had no map.
There was no sign.
I'm lost. Well, crap.

Shakespeare, #130:
Her eyes, her hair, her skin, her body
Are rather plain; she's sure no hottie.
I love her, though, with all my life.
(She is my mistress, not my wife.)

[Roger Slater]

SNOW MAN (Wallace Stevens)

A mind made of winter can stare
at the blankness of snow everywhere
and not only view the nothing that's true
but the nothing that's not even there.