Yes, real good. We've all improved on Keats, I'd say. Here's another that is unfortunately not funny, but the rhymes are there:

You ask me which is better, hills or plains?
I think about this question night and day.
I've lived in both, from both I've moved away,
And both have left their own peculiar stains
Upon my soul, their joys and yes, their pains.
Perhaps I'd choose the hills from March to May,
For springtime is the ideal time to play
At rolling down the slopes, and when it rains
I love to hear the raindrops in the leaves.
But summer months belong to burning suns
And corn protected in its husky sheaves.
I can't decide. On drawing my last breath,
Someday I'll say I cherished all my runs
Through hills and plains. And loved them both to death.

Good one, Douglas! Clever.

Jerome - Thanks for your thoughtfulness, but no worries if you choose to submit your Mars poem. There could be other vehicles reaching Mars as I write! This bouts-rime challenge is really a game, after all. And it's a pretty engrossing activity, I would say.

I like the sentiments in your sonnet, which are intriguing, and reflect reality. So I wouldn't worry too much about the allusion to planet death. How Mars became such a desert is a matter of speculation, as well as whether there was or still is life there. For sure there were no intelligent Martians that turned the planet into an arid wasteland. (And no irrigation canals, which Percival Lowell imagined.) But Earth is, unfortunately, undergoing desertification. Here is an article I found about it:

http://www.greenfacts.org/en/desertification/index.htm

Thanks, Martin, generous of you. Thanks also for the interesting link. Had close contact with one or two Saharan ergs last year, which provided food for thought, despite the wettest English summer for 100 years.

Douglas, the Beverly Hill-Billies was shown over here for years, but a very long time ago. Has probably stuck in many people's minds because of the country and western style introduction to each episode. So most Oldie readers would have been exposed to it, I think. Ingenious one.

(I seem to be stuck on the animal kingdom)

xxxxxxxxxxFrog

Amphibians can’t live upon the plains,
Our skin needs constant moisture every day.
This pond’s our home; we don’t move far away,
For fear we’ll lose our iridescent stains.
The pond’s well-stocked; no need for hunger pains.
I’ll crunch a water-boatman or a May-
Fly for my lunch, and then it’s off to play,
Or bask beneath the downpour when it rains,
Or hop about on water-lily leaves,
Or shelter under them from burning suns.
The reeds and rushes grow in mighty sheaves;
I swim among them, coming up for breath
Or for a snack ... And so my story runs,
From egg to tadpole, then from frog to death.

Very neat indeed, Brian - the first really light-hearted one that flows without any sign of imposed rhymes. (Sp. typo on "iridescent".)

I agree, this is charming and inventive, Brian. I like that it is in first-person frog.

Hoo-oo-oo-a-a-a-a-a

In fields and forest, outback, plains,
what greater joy at break of day!
So have a laugh! Don’t shy away!
Your kookaburra laughter stains
the rising mist, makes light of pains
at mimicry and though it’s May,
though winter licks the skies, you play
among the eucalypts in rains
that drench the dusty wattle leaves.
You laugh through woodland winds and suns;
you cackle as combines bale the sheaves;
I laugh so hard…fair out of breath!
Then come – because time surely runs –
and kookaburra, laugh me to death.

.
.

Hi, all you clever bouts rimés-ers!

Here's the reply from Tessa Castro regarding variations on the words:

"Yes, that's fine as long as the rhyming element remains. The sense wasn't specified, but may and May are fine, and abstains is OK for stains. I think that Sun's instead of suns scrapes through too."

I'm SO pleased to see that Roger's "abstains" is permissible (but right from the start I said "I'm sure it will be").

There are some brilliant entries on this thread; goodness knows how you pick only four winners. Not an enviable task! (I do hope I can report, in due course, that several Sphereans have won :))

Jayne

I confess that I was expecting the magazine to go the strict constructionist route. When I read Roger's "abstains," I thought it was something that would shine as a repetend/variation in a villanelle or a sestina, for example, but that it wouldn't pass muster here. I'm happy to be proven wrong. Thanks for looking into it for us, Jayne.

Thanks, Jayne. I suppose we will now see a flood of new entries to take advantage of this new rule/loophole.

But I suppose that "planes" for "plains" would not fly?

No, I suspect you'd be shot down or grounded.

Darn! Here's one produced before Jayne brought the good news from the Wen to Esphere. Determined to produce one where that awkward word 'sheaves' can come in naturally and not be figurative. Sorry, Seree, I don't think combine harvestgers bother with baling (that's hay) or making sheaves. They just cut, thresh and spew out grain into bags.

Though wheat and barley prosper on our plains,
The sickle and the scythe have had their day.
The last who swung them long since passed away
And harvest now brings noise and diesel stains
To such vast tracts of cereals, it pains
The eye, be yields and profits what they may.
Where, all safe in, are villagers at play
Before the ploughing and the autumn rains
Or seeking nuts among the fallen leaves
With leathery skins from years of winds and suns?
Who needs a sure hand still with stooks and sheaves?
Such country life has drawn its final breath,
Lush lanes have turned to mere commuter-runs –
Thank God that phoney idyll’s died the death!

Thanks, Jayne.That 'may' was a killer for me. I can make my Lear sonnet much better. And I will.

What about 'lush eaves'? Quite Keatsian I feel.

Just a reminder in case any of you haven't read my post #88: Tessa's counsel:

"Yes, that's fine as long as the rhyming element remains. The sense wasn't specified, but may and May are fine, and abstains is OK for stains. I think that Sun's instead of suns scrapes through too."

So...no taking the P, boys and girls! None of these, not even in jest (...Brian! :p):

planes (as in cheese, air, or any other kind)
sundae (as in ice-cream)
aweigh (as in anchors)
Staines (as in the Middlesex town)
Paynes (as in the family of)
Mae (as in West)
reigns (as in what our Liz does)
sons (as in male offspring)
lush eaves (as in what John just said*)
De 'ath (as in Wilfred, all-round baddie and Oldie contributor)

Heck, I still haven't done one! Now, which topic hasn't been covered... ???)

Jayne

*edited in: Nope, John. Frayed knot!

I'm not finding 'May' a problem. How to fit in plains and sheaves uncontrivedly is wrecking my head.

Sod pulchritude. Let’s hear it for the plains,
Who, like all dogs, are surely due their day.
Unpurse your whistle-lips and put away
Your pert Pirelli-pictures, with their stains
Of secret substances. You who take pains
To pluck and press the darling buds of May,
Consider something other. Make a play
For summer roses, tempered by the rains
Of real experience, their leathern leaves
Made lovely by the touch of several suns.
Leave the green shoots and carry home the sheaves.
Little Miss Pretty fades with every breath;
Nick the silk stocking and the ladder runs
Through ankle, calf, thigh, cunny, heart and death.

Ah, sterling effort from Ann! Sod pulchritude indeed. I wanted a colon or period at the end of L12 instead of a comma, and thought perhaps the darling buds line could use a comma or two, but tastes vary. Great take on the brief.

But can it compete with the Clampetts? This has been such a fun thread. I've never tried to write one of these, and am a bit disheartened by the competition, but perhaps I'll mull it over. Don't hold your rhymes-with-death.

Ann - This one of yours is just brilliant - not least because, from that splendid opening blast, it fairly clips along throughout.

I was going to resist doing any more, but Jayne's news on the 'give' on the original rhyme words is entirely responsible for the existence of this fourth effort. The content is, of course, entirely my own fault!

‘Dr.’ HUNT’S HEALTHY CHOICES

“You’ll understand,” my doctor now explains,
“that to increase your choice, on any day
when symptoms come, and we have sent away
some sample slides, so that, comparing stains,
competing labs can offer drugs for pains
that you’ve been troubled by at least since May -
and this is where your rights come into play -
you choose, although it seems it never rains
but pours, which cheaper treatment really leaves
you feeling better. So - with choice - the sun’s
come out again!” He beams and shuffles sheaves
of out-sourced contracts, while, beneath my breath -
“if this is market choice,” my thinking runs,
“it looks as if I’ll get a private death.”

Yes. Ann will surely win. And it sounds just like Ann, just as te Keats, though not good, sounds just like Keats.

Oh, goody! Well, no one can say I haven't kept the rhyming element, except for the last word. To quote Oklahoma, I'd say that "I've gone about as far as I can go." (Needless to say, I won't be submitting this one.)

To whom it may concern: Hereby complains
One Brian Allgar. It’s like “Groundhog Day”,
Writing this stuff. There must be an easier way
To make a living. Only drink sustains
(I'll even swallow cheap champagnes like Spain’s)
While struggling with these blasted bouts-rimés.
My laptop with its flickering display
Constrains my brains to suffer mental strains.
The booze relieves; I’m rolling up my sleeves
To show my rivals, those complacent sons
Of bitches (scribbling Adams, bookish Eves),
A thing or two. Forget the whisky-breath;
I take my eager pen; away it runs,
Bold as Macbeth upon the blasted ’eath.


Ooops! I'd posted this before seeing Jayne's latest:
So...no taking the P, boys and girls! None of these, not even in jest (...Brian! :p)

Too late!

And no blank verse in sight.

This is too lovely.

I've just read the latest from Ann and Nigel, both excellent.

Ann, "Sod pulchritude" is the snappiest beginning to a competition entry I've seen since someone (I can't remember who) started a reply to Larkin with "You lying toad!"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"and put away
Your pert Pirelli-pictures, with their stains
Of secret substances"

is agreeably yucky.

Brian, youb are a curious kind of a genius.

Brian,
However did I guess that you'd do a spoof version? ;)

Here's my afternoon's toil:

“Those patterned sweaters are so dated! Plains
are “in”, have been for ever and a day,”
I said. “Just throw the whole damn lot away;
they’re dull, old-fashioned, shabby, full of stains.”

My Dad, a martyr to his aches and pains,
a widower for eight years, come this May,
has given up on life. He doesn’t play
his friends at bowls, or golf (“It always rains”),
or dress up smartly, and he scarcely leaves
the house, except for short strolls if the sun’s
out and he’s bored. I’m going round with sheaves
of bumf for singles’ clubs... I hold my breath:

"You mean... you wouldn’t mind?” Great! Now he runs
around with Pearl. He used to wait for death.

Good one, Jayne!

Conquering Death

Her belly, as flat as the Plains,
has been shrinking each hour and day
as she languishes, wasting away,
her battery scarred with the stains
of corrosion, her virtual pains
as distant as Deneb. It’s May.
Her buddies are busy at play,
though she doesn’t take note if it rains
or the maple and oak shed their leaves
or the sky has five moons and three suns.
The specialist studies some sheaves
on her illness, releases a breath
and, after some tests that he runs,
recharges her, conquering death.


Version 2 (more concrete):

Her tires, as flat as the Plains,
have been leaking each hour and day,
her fuel nearly frittered away,
her body all blotched with the stains
of corrosion. Her doctor takes pains
to examine the symptoms. It’s May.
She imagines her buddies at play,
sleeker than seals when it rains,
lighter than wind-carried leaves,
content as a million suns.
Now the doc, having glanced through some sheaves,
takes her battery and a deep breath
and, after some tests that he runs,
recharges her, conquering death.

Imponderable Sheaves

You ponder the expanse of the Great Plains
measured against the earth (which in a day
drifts millions of miles), then looking farther away
at Jupiter, you see its smallest stains
can swallow earth and moon combined. The pains
you take to grasp infinity just may
yield whys and wherefores by the truckload. Play
with facts and figures, sometimes wisdom’s rains
come pouring down. But nature mostly leaves
you baffled as an earless bat. Old suns
and newborn suns, imponderable sheaves
of stuff out there, like molecules of breath,
disperse. You probe the cosmos as it runs
its course, and know its birth is in its death.

A very nice piece, Jayne.

As to how you guessed I'd do something so uncharacteristic as writing a spoof piece, it's a complete mystery to me.

Martin, I like both yours, and especially, in the second one, "baffled as an earless bat".

John - why, thank'ee, Squire (tugs forelock).

Thank you, Martin and Brian.

I'm still chasing no. 3 for that elusive Bouts rimés hat trick but I'm up against it; the standard of the entries here is so high!

Jayne

Instead of running round like a bunch of headless chickens wouldn't it be easier simply to do exactly what it says on the tin? After all, Keats managed it even though he was sick!

But be got to pick his own rhymes. No one made him use
"sheaves."

The Muse made him. She is very insistent, you know.

We are not a Muse.

Thanks, Brian. You've come up with some truly inspired takes yourself. Your spoof is priceless.

I fiddled around a bit more with my approach in post #105. I like the vagueness of the original, which contains tinges of SF or surrealism. But I just pasted in a more "realistic" version below it (about a debilitated car). Which do you like better?

I love SF so, unsurprisingly I like the first, more SF, one better. I think it allows the reader's imagination freer play (and leaves one guessing, tantalisingly but pleasingly, at exactly what form of being is undergoing this treatment) whereas the direct car reference ties it down to a literal referent which makes the personal approach harder to identify with.

(I composed my own before reading others' work here - as usual. Some phrases, such as Great Plains, recur - to be expected, given the form of this competition.)
I often debate with myself what punctuation to use at line-ends; comments welcome!

Homesteads

We lived a farming life on the Great Plains.
Adventure was the colour of each day!
We’d skip our houses, stay for hours away…
At last, waltz home; be scolded for our stains
On clothes and skin - we didn’t mind the pains
Of all those scrapes and falls! Her name was May.
Through Spring and Summer-long we’d talk and play;
At last there came the thunder and the rains,
The season of the yellowing of leaves;
We, like the crops, had stored up stock of suns
And stood now taller, like the gathered sheaves.
I cherish now, and will, till end of breath
The fondness of those days. When my blood runs
Its last, we’ll meet… on Greater Plains of death.

Bright Star, My Aunt Fanny

How should one kill a poet who complains
about his bloody cough all night and day?
A fiancée can never get away
from pillow talk of gruesome pillow stains.
He’s half consumed by his consumptive pains.
It wouldn’t be surprising if in May
he's crushed beneath a Grecian urn display.
Expose him to the ‘gentle’ Summer rains;
sans merci, brew some belladonna leaves;
use lenses to refocus Autumn suns
upon his clothing; choke him with some sheaves
from Chapman’s Homer (might improve his breath).
Or you can wait until his doctor runs
him off to Rome. That ought to spell his death.

Ruthlessly clever, mercilessly amusing, Mary!
Another very different tack taken, from the shared 'givens'!

Excellently sour, Mary. This one will stick in the mind whatever happens. Great respect,

Nigel

Graham, fellow SF fan - Many thanks for letting me know your preference. I like your Great Plains impression very much.

And Mary, yours is excellent (though downright cruel). Now I'll have to try to write something with more poetic license with the rhymes (as you did). So far I've stuck entirely to the given words without embellishment (because of all that talk about having to be exact early in the thread).

By the way, John and Jayne, if I want to enter several poems, do I send them all in one e-mail or each one in its own e-mail?

Never done this exercise before. It's bloody hard to make it flow logically. Decided therefore to go for the nonsense rhyme - the synopsis of my forthcoming musical about Sting.

Red-light Roxanne dumps him. He is too creepy, she explains.
So Sting resolves to call her up a thousand times a day,
although he suspects he might be wishing his days away.
He can’t stand losing her, so he flies to the moon, tear stains
on his spacesuit. There, he breaks his legs, to add to his pains.
(Luckily he hasn’t copped she is really Brian May.)
Then he meets a legal alien and begins to play
Da Do Do Do for it but it shuffles away. Sting leaves
the moon, muttering some tat about invisible suns.
Back home, he is so lonely, so lonely that he stuffs sheaves
of messages inside bottles, watching every last breath
she takes, every move she makes, until finally she runs
dementedly from him, shrieking, “Oh Sting, where is thy death?”