Speccie Rhyme Time by 26th June
 

Well I might mend my wretched form of late with this one.

No. 2804: rhyme time


You are invited to supply a poem containing as many ingenious rhymes as possible (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 26 June.

And I dare say you've already got quite a few of those tucked away, John.

... says the very Master of Ingenuity himself ;)

Indeed I do. Here's an opening bid.

Love You Madly

Air:'Rapture, Rapture' from 'The Yeomen of the Guard'

Love you madly, love you crazily,
Love you eagerly, love you lazily,
Love you everly, leave you neverly,
Daft or cleverly, daffy-down-daisily.

Care’s a rough, resorts to thuggery,
Care’s a tough, employs skulduggery,
Care’s subliminal, care’s buliminal,
Care’s a criminal blown to buggery.

Love is sweet and indestructible.
You’re complete and ineluctable,
Toast and honey and fine and funny and
On the money and tax-deductable.

Pippety-poppety, down to Scarborough,
Market Rasen, Market Harborough,
See the Acropolis, then Minneapolis,
Indianapolis, Santa Barbara

A girl who wears a magic skirt'll
be transformed into a turtle.

But if she changes clothes, the girl'll
be transformed into a squirrel.

And that's not all! A clever boy'd
be wise and prudent to avoid

the girl and to refuse to date her.
With earrings she's an alligator

whose every tooth's a sharp incisor,
and you will be her appetizer.

Though “Mozart” denotes art, we don’t give a goat’s fart
For “Don Giovanni” or “Cosi Fan Tutte”;
They shove down our throats art that’s high as a stoat’s fart -
Just give us a sarnie, a soggy chip butty.

If somebody quotes art, we get on our coats; art
Is stuff for the nerdies, the birdies, the beardies.
This “too many notes” art is not-worth-two-groats art,
So nuts to your Verdis, and other such weirdies.

With drivel like Haydn’s, the culture gap widens,
And Schubert to you, Bert, is boring and wooden.
This muck they call music makes both me and you sick
(Though Parry - old Hubert - came up with a good ‘un).

To those who cry “Play us the great Amadeus”,
Or “Let’s have some Dvorak, some Bach, some Corelli”,
You’ll have to belay us, or flay us, or pay us
To swallow your score, Jack. Now, what’s on the telly?


(It's all lies, of course. I adore Mozart and the others, but I'd sell my grandmother for a good joke, and my sister for an ingenious rhyme.)

Nice one, Brian. I'll wager ten bob each way.

The Enigma of Carnivorous Morticians
 

He’s up to his elbows in somebody’s “cavity”,
Then watches the service with ponderous gravity.
But as soon as the corpus is under the ground,
He drives to a roadhouse, and orders a round

Of drinks for himself and his female assistant;
That they follow with sirloin, which seems inconsistent
With their recent encounter with hominid meat;
But flesh is the diet they both love to eat.

They buried a banker and then a bartender;
Embalmed an old maid, and an auto parts vender.
They’ve roasted to ashes, a virgin librarian;
But why, may I ask, are they not vegetarian?

Like butchering cattle, they follow a grisly trade;
Yet how can their appetites still be so retrograde?
Just what makes morticians so downright carnivorous?
If I had their job, I’d be strictly herbivorous.

"Well I might mend my wretched form of late with this one."

Your form has hardly been wretched. A pity about our treasure store that was once the Literary Review Grand Poetry Comp. Here's my idea for Lucy's latest.

He’s not in New Guinea, Brazil or Alaska;
His only abode is remote Madagascar.
The way that he hops and his big eyes reveal a
Lemur that lives around Andohehela,
And though classed as rare there appear to be plenty
In the island’s reserves for wild life near Berenty.
Go on a tour and of course you may track a
White coated lemur. It’s Verreaux’s sifaka.
Like many poor beasts that have come to grief too
This lemur’s a marvel in Tenerife Zoo.
In the wild it attracted too much with its fuss,
A poor little primate called Propithecus,
And now its survival depends on man’s charity,
This tree-loving creature, our cuddliest rarity.
Would God (do you think?) want a world that would lack a
Four footed fun-ball like Verreaux’s sifaka?

I haven't seen any examples yet of this sort of rhyme:

There was a young lady of Bude
Who danced on the stage in the nude.
A young fellow cried, 'What a m-
Agnificent bottom!'
Just like that. Straight out loud. Bloody rude.

Or indeed of this:

Come all you lords of ladies intellectual
Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?

Yep, I reckon Byron could have done well in this competition.

Some of you may have seen a version of this in KIN the on-line magazine. I've supercharged it with rhymes, perhaps at the expense of the poetry. I would welcome Orwn's opinion on that.

Sweet Albert

Antic and frantic and antediluvian,
Monument massive, impassive, magnificent,
Kitsch which is rich as the Inca Peruvian,
Omnium-gatherum, omnibenificent,

Fashioned with passion, a festival sculptural,
Multiform, vermiform, multidimensional,
Menhir memorious, mass-multicultural,
Scorning conformalist classic conventional,

Solemn sepulchral, a sombre funereal
Fief for the grief-stricken Empress of India,
Dateless as sorrow and weightless as Ariel,
Scion of iron when weather wears windier.

Work is the theme and the dream is sensational,
Magic, majestical phantasmagoria,
Seeking the skies in a guise inspirational,
Votive, emotive, VICTORIA GLORIA.

Dunno about the poetry, John, since I didn't see the original, but as to the rhymes, you've unquestionably packed 'em in. If I spot a spot where you might be able to cram one more in, I'll let you know, but don't hold your breath.

"VICTORIA GLORIA"

Perhaps to impart some sense you need Victoriae gloria otherwise the two words mean very little but then that is in keeping with the rest of the poem.

Still, you have accumulated many strange rhymes, which presumably was the sole object.

Marcus, I think that coming up with strange rhymes is indeed the object of this exercise, although I agree that this does not necessarily preclude meaning.

I hadn't spotted it before, but I like your lemurial piece.

No, Marcus, I think VICTORIA GLORIA is better (vocative, don't you know; the whole thing is vocative, as it were)) and, for what it's worth, the lines make perfect sense.

Dear me, a trip around some Wren churches today seems to have inspired unusual rudeness. Do forgive me.

“Help, nurse, it’s my balls,”
said the bells of St Paul’s.
“You want geriatrics,”
said the bells of St Patrick’s.
“That’s genito-urinary,
dimwit,” said Canterbury.
“Get out your tackle,”
sighed the Mormon Tabernacle.
“Are these varicella?”
asked Santiago de Compostela.
“Complicated gonorrhoea,”
said the Hagia Sofia.
“Take ten centiliters
twice daily,” said St Peter’s.
“Stop shtupping your Mom,”
said the great Notre Dame.

Dear me, Brian. What WILL Lucy think? Utterly disgraceful.

Circumcision Cove
 

(This is an unnamed cove of Penobscot Bay, Maine. It is a safe harbor, but its entrance is so small that getting a boat into it is “about as tight a scrape as a circumcision”, according to the late Allen “Mike” Brown, of Northport, Maine.)

Offshore the storm-molested and rockbound coast of Maine,
The sailor can be bested, and never sail again;
And once the sea has got him, you’ll find his sodden bones
Decaying on its bottom, in care of Davy Jones.

So when Nor’easters blow, I make a quick escape
To a tiny cove I know, so tight my keel will scrape.
It has a narrow entry whose transit takes precision.
It’s scorned by yachting’s gentry; I’ve dubbed it “Circumcision”.

It’s waves will make you woozy; discomfort is the norm.
But beggars can’t be choosy seeking refuge from the storm.
Each time the sky turns leaden, or if my hull gets stove;
You’ll find my vessel headin’ to Circumcision Cove.

Circumcision Cove
 

Sorry, double posted ... so I did a little cutting.

Marcus, I think that coming up with strange rhymes is indeed the object of this exercise,

Hello Brian - I enjoyed your artful poem.

I know that "coming up with strange rhymes is the object of this exercise". You have lost my little adjective "sole."

No, Marcus, I think VICTORIA GLORIA is better (vocative, don't you know; the whole thing is vocative, as it were)) and, for what it's worth, the lines make perfect sense

Hello John - I am surprised at this rare use of continuous apostrophe. If we concede the entire poem is in the vocative case then we are led to the conclusion that the person being addressed is Albert. Huge though this concession be, we can force sense into the words "Victoria gloria" only if they are attempting to mean that Albert is the glory of the Queen. Thus we must place the lady in the genitive - as I previously suggested. I proffer this advice in all humility, having taught Latin for quite a few years.


But your audacious rhymes are certainly eye-catching.

I'm sure Queen Victoria was far too well-bred to have genitives.

I'm sure Queen Victoria was far too well-bred to have genitives

She would not be amused by that comment , Brian. She was a harsh lady, opposed to breast-feeding as well as male genitives.

Probably a bit too short to enter for the competition

Twas not his twice daily carafe o’ dill
That rendered the poor Earl of Stafford ill.
“The wrong plant was crushed,”
The Earl’s physic gushed.
“Oh what laxative powers has the daffodil!”

or, indeed, this

Young Juan left his dear Costa Brava
And travelled from Jeddah to Java
In search of a land to inspire him,
To hold him, to rouse him, to fire him.
He travelled to Montevideo
And Munich and Moscow and Mayo
But only the wilds of Saskatchewan
Were impressive enough to enrapture Juan.

Peter,
if brevity be indeed the soul of wit, that would urge that you enter those verses. I think so!
Cheers.

You may have taught Latin, Marcus, but not Latin as I have rewritten it. Besides, the Latin you taught, as I am sure you are well aware, is merely a literary construct which assumes that Cicero knew the stuff better than anybody else. What Romans actually SAID is a very moot point. I say they said what I said. Oh and it is not Albert who is addressed, but his memorial.

Peter, you are brilliant. Enter that as one poem. It's a winner. Dammit!

You may have taught Latin, Marcus, but not Latin as I have rewritten it.

Exactly, John.


What Romans actually SAID is a very moot point. I say they said what I said.

Hmmm. Anachronistically?


Oh and it is not Albert who is addressed, but his memorial.

Then my suggestion applies a fortiori.

But let us talk of other things: cabbages, kings and Brian's win this week in The Spectator. My best wishes!

Though Byron claims your ladies have “hen-peck’d you all”,
Such calumny is false and ineffectual,
For when the Reaper grimly shall collect you all
(A destiny that cannot but affect you all -
Mortality’s an ill that must infect you all);
When chortling Death has voted to elect you all
And Charon’s been alerted to expect you all;
When doctors wring their hands as they inspect you all,
And mortuary garments have bedecked you all
As sawing surgeons cheerfully dissect you all,
While bits of tissue, bone, and blood have flecked you all,
(Making it hard, alas, to resurrect you all),
They’ll find that loving spouses helped protect you all -
‘Twas beer and cigarettes, not wives, that wrecked you all.

And when my wild-card entry has out-lucked you all,
Will I then be considered to have... ?

Between the silken sheets in which you've tucked us all,
The dreams in which that happens well instruct us all.

... or when, like garden peas, you've shelled and shucked us all,
What kindly hand could ever reconstruct us all?

And now for something completely different.

Elegy for a Cook

His hand was the hand which
Transformed a ham sandwich.
His touch with two veg and
Roast beef was a legend.
His bacon and kidney.
He did it right, didn't he?
His way with plum duff – ins
Piration! His muffins –
My tongue scarce can utter – re
Spendently buttery!
Gone with the wind, such
An artist, a nonsuch,
A chef who was peerless,
Our portion of cheer less,
Our banqueting done, grie-
F descends on the hungry.

Their hygiene’s infelicitous,
They’re greedy and duplicitous;
They’re sneaky as solicitors -
Oh never trust a rat!
Last night one came to visit us;
He chewed my favourite hat.
He was so very rattish; you'd
Agree, I think, his attitude
Was vile. It’s more than platitude
To say that rats’ ingratitude
Is known in every latitude.
I really liked that hat he chewed.
If it had been the cat he chewed,
I should have felt less grief.
That hat was natty that he chewed -
I’m pained beyond belief.

IF I RULED THE WORLD

My feet? They would go shoeless.
My sister? She would poo less.
My brother? He would drool less.
(They both would boo-hoo-hoo less).
My classmates? They'd be cruel less
(and treat me like a fool less).
My teachers? They would rule less.
My hair? I would shampoo less.
My folks? Not quite so clueless
(and certainly uncool less).
My chores? Well, quite a few less
(and not just one or two less).
My homework? I would do less
(since I would go to school less).

Advice for the Broken Hearted

Try not to lie there and snivel in bed.
Leave bitter screeches of ‘swivel!’ unsaid.
Try to be stoic and civil instead.
Leave all your poetic drivel unread.

Kids and Butane Lighters Don’t Mix
 

Interred beneath this mound of clay
Lies little Heather Chalmers;
Who accident'ly, while at play,
Ignited her pajamas.