The Oldie Competition 'Lying in Bed' by 14th December
 

Lovely! Tessa has chosen a great topic this month, after the prose comp last time around, in which Brian got a well-deserved HM and the rest of us got zilch. (Well, we're poets, so poetry comps suit us better, natch.)

Now, who will choose lying (as in lazing) in bed, and who will go for lying (as in telling lies) in bed, I wonder? A lot of both goes on!
This one's going to be fun.

Jayne

COMPETITION No. 158
by Tessa Castro

The way we sleep tells a lot about us, scientists say. So a poem, please, called ‘Lying in Bed’. Maximum 16 lines.

Entries to ‘Competition 158’ by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), email (comps@theoldie.co.uk) or fax (020 7436 8804) by 14 December.
Don’t forget to include your postal address.

Lying in Bed

You’ve climbed the stairs to Bedfordshire
And left the world behind,
The wooden hill to Bedfordshire
Where all are deaf and blind.
They speak the truth in Bedfordshire,
Of bliss and ruth in Bedfordshire,
Where mind speaks out to mind,
And no-one is unkind.

Across the skies to Bedfordshire
You’ve sailed without a chart,
To dream in deepest Bedfordshire
Where all the passions start.
Lie down in bright, white Bedfordshire,
Put on the night in Bedfordshire,
And find a place apart,
To listen to your heart.

Lying In Bed

At night I like to lie in bed,
pillow underneath my head,
blanket pulled up to my chin,
dreaming of a mortal sin.
And may that dream be now confessed:
I'm often, in that dream, undressed,
unbridled, unafraid, unshy.
At night in bed I like to lie.

Sharp and to the point, Roger. One of your best.

I will not die in Old Tenille where the cotton lies in rows,
But I lie in bed in Old Tenille--and I know she knows.

She knows another's in my bed as I lie in Old Tenille.
She'll curse my name and heaven dread as we allemand the reel.

As I lie in bed in old Tenille, I cannot face tomorrow.
The fiddlers' wink and the banjo's plinking be to me such sorrow.

I will not die in Old Tenille, nor be a woman's fool.
So I sharpen up my blade tonight to teach someone my rule.

Lying in Bed

It’s true that I’d be lying if I said
I find it easy getting out of bed.
There goes the damned alarm! Once more I struggle
To turn it off. Oh, how I yearn to snuggle
Beneath the downy pillows and the covers,
And dream of past insatiable lovers.

There’s what’s-her-name, the barmaid from “The Rose”,
And thingummy, who loved to suck my toes,
And all those girls who came to see my etchings ...
Forgive me for these geriatric lechings,
But when you’re my age, chewing on a denture,
It’s memories that keep you from dementia.

Where did it go, that once-abundant crumpet?
I’m now reduced to blowing my own trumpet.
But duty calls; I have to walk the dog,
And write my “Son of Casanova ” blog.

John, I find that verse of yours lovely!
My Dad often said 'Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire' when I was a kid.


Lying in Bed

“I cannot lie:
‘Twas truly I
Cut down the cherry tree,” he said,
As he lay sleeping in their bed.
She sighed; that same recurring dream
Was clearly playing in his head.

“Oh George,” she nudged
(He slightly budged),
“I know by now - you are honest;
But me, I want to get some rest!”
She frowned; this subject, she had found,
Made him (asleep) a nightly pest:

“Can’t you forget – at last?
That tree is in the past!
Please at least try –
To LET IT LIE!”

Thank you, Graham. Actually, though I have come across many people with childhood memores of the phrase, I came across it quite lately, in a novel I think. Lovely evocative phrase that makes Bedfordshire like Timbuctoo. Whereas in reality (huh!) it is nothing of the sort. It's like pleasantly finding that Whitstable is redolent of romance to somebody living in New York.

Lovely poem, John; too good for the comp.
Betjemanesque.

She had turned seventeen, and was Homecoming Queen;
Athletic, and sweetly beguiling.
He was triple her age, both a wit and a sage;
A gentleman, pleasantly smiling.

Endowed like a horse, he was eager, of course;
So, right away after their wedding,
In bed they'd be lying, romanticaly trying
(And pretty soon, wore out the bedding).

It's her forty-fifth year, and her innermost fear -
That his lust for her body is dying -
He denies, but her ears disbelieve what they hear;
And she knows that he simply is lying.

As she lies in repose, she undoubtedly knows
That Thanatos soon will come Reaping.
But until then she'll lie with her withered old guy,
Where they now share their bed just for sleeping.

John, I can quite imagine that Whit+stable would evoke romance for a New Yorker (or any American) - by suggesting Walt Whitman; homely horsiness (with all that the horse has meant to American history and culture; and also 'stable' as in serene, placid, equable, dependable - someone to lean on in a crisis and draw comfort from...

Thank you too for your commendations of my adopted home county, Fife.

Recline and decline

Is yours a spine that bends like willow,
Strength sapped by eiderdown and pillow?
Long lie-ins waste both wit and muscle,
Life’s prizes come to those who bustle.

When prone, the outlook’s horizontal,
And mouse-sized snags grow mastodontal
So wimps who linger under sheeting
Will fail and flop and take a beating.
.
Ah yes, young business push and shovers,
Beware the place a duvet covers.
No boss or parsnips will you butter
In bed, that road towards debt and gutter!

Such sound advice! I beg you, take it!
Get up, and out, and on, and make it,
Like me, a whizz-kid tired of whizzing,
With time, at last, for good long zizzing.

Tonight, when I am nearly to cloud nine,
I dream a picture-word and see that 'bed'
resembles what it means: the b, whose line
is like a headboard by a drowsing head;

the sheet and mattress that transect the e;
and feet against d bedpost—what’s the word
for this? A machicote? A soldanry?
Lie still! Pretend those thoughts have not occurred . . .

Just be the bed, the thing, that word, the . . . hell.
Opisthognathous? Mazard? Pseudoblepsis?
Pantopragmatic, frammis, casquatel,
rhabdosophy, kememe, omphaloskepsis?

Perth Amboy, tergiversator or wyke?
By five, with half the dictionary read
I know it’s none of those, so—feeling like
an ideogram—I send myself to bed.

Frank

I love yours, Frank. What a novel insight, and the last line is killer!

Susan

Thanks, Susan - back for tweaks - won't vouch that all of those words exist outside the OED, but it was fun hunting them. Perth Amboy's a nod to Thurber's "More Alarms At Night" - I made the mistake of rereading it in a quiet library the other day, and it had me spluttering in admiration.

Fantastic, Frank!
And thanks for providing those words, which I expect will reward my reading up on later ...

I put together two quatrains, but they don't actually belong together. So here's one.

Are you lying in your bed?
Expect a little prying
from newsmen who would else be dead,
and not for want of lying.

Hell Hath No Fury...
 

"My darling, I have a confession -- "
he sighed, as they lay there in bed.
She thwarted him, "Shh... yes, I know, love;
you talked in your sleep." Then she said,
"You bedded my friend, and my sister,
and one of your secretaries too."
He cried, "Will you ever forgive me?"
She kissed him and said, "Course I do!"

The truth was, she'd only suspected,
but risked it by calling his bluff,
expecting an outraged denial,
but now she had proof. Fair enough -
his honesty would be rewarded,
she thought to herself: he can keep
his Beemer, a duvet... and that's it!
She grinned as she dropped off to sleep.

Ooooh, that's wicked, Jayne. I must remember to gag myself before going to sleep.

Ooh, Brian, do we have a bit of a guilty conscience, then, eh? ;)

(When they say "by December 14th", do you reckon that on the 14th, just after 9am, is OK? I hope so, otherwise I'm not even in the running!)

Has anyone ever won with a last-minute, on-the-deadline entry? The Speccie always says "by midday" on the given date, but I'm not sure about The Oldie and other comps.

Jayne

Surely 'by 'in this context means 'not later than' so you should be all right.?

Jayne,
I hope that you get in under the wire. This one could put you in the winner's circle.

Fortunately, Jayne, I don't fancy my wife's friends or sisters, and I've never had a secretary - at least, not in the sense "employed".

As for the date, I should have thought that any time today would be OK. After all, they didn't say "before the 14th".

Thanks, fellas. I expect you're all probably right in that I'm not too late, especially as our US friends are hours behind us; it's not far into the 14th over there yet.

(I especially hope that you're right, Doug! Thanks :))

Oh, and Brian... I'm glad to hear you're not a bad boy.

Jayne

Hah! Chance'ld be a fine thing!