Speccie Dear John
 

No. 2593: Dear John
You are invited to submit a Dear John letter in the style of an author or poet of your choice (16 lines/150 words maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2593’ by 23 April or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.

I think that looks very inviting and I expect a large entry from you clever people. You're good at parody, better than you seem to be at anagrams. Auden came up with an anagram for Tamburlaine - a nubile tram. Quite good but not a winner. Wystan Hugh Auden is HAW! HUG NASTY NUDE!

Please note that prizes are now £30, plus a fiver extra for the top gun. You can see that our fame has reached as far as lucy for our thread on 'Anagram Hell'. Lets get in among them prizes.

I have to tell you I won £30 for my Saint Simeon Stylites and the overall winning Diogenes is a gem. By Martin Parker, who is a real person. I think the other winners are all pseudonyms, probably of Bill Greenwell's.

Oh well done John! You didn't have to tell us but for what it's worth I would have given you the 35 quid.

DEAR JOHNNY

Johnny, Johnny, here's your shoe.
Hop on out by half past two.

Half past two is much too late!
Please be gone by half past eight.

Pack your bags, get out of town,
And I will give you a half a crown.

Yours,
Mother Goose

Oh yes I did have to tell you. Thanks for your best wishes, Jim. I look forward toyour take on the new one. I've found an old sonnet I wrote for another competition. It didn't win but I'll try it again. I don't THINK the other competition was a Speccie one anyway. A dear John in the style of Sylvia Plath would be fun, but I can't do Sylvia Plath.

FROSTY

Some say the world will end in fire,
  some say in ice.
Though you were once my heart's desire
and often made me feel like fire,
now that I've considered twice,
alas, I'm pretty sure I know
enough to say you're more like ice
  and if you go
  it would be nice.

Shoot! Another time waster!

Way to go, John! And congrats to all the Bill Greenwells, whoever they may be!

Well, as one Stylites to another, congrats. Remember those two importan words, John: DUTY FREE.

Dear Jean:

Because I do not wish to burn again,
Because I do not wish again to yearn,
Because between the burning and the yearning
I do not wish, again, to turn,
I write to you, dear Jean, aux Dardanelles,
To tell you I have had a little fling--
Nothing untoward, only a bit of dancing--
With one Miss Haigh-Wood,
Which has led, sic is insisto, to a ring--
Ab initio ad finem, the sort of thing
Which is more lasting
Than any saint's soon-ended fasting
Or a perishable bunch of hyacinths.
I hope you're getting out down there
To see the Turkish sights,
mon semblable, mon frere.

No one said it had to be a parody, eh? I could send off a poem in my own style, n'est-ce pas?

Good on yer, John!

Dear John,

How could I love thee? When I count the ways
thee findest to deceive me, day and night;
and how thee carried on when out of sight,
the wonder is that I'd not flee thy place.
So now I will despise thee all my days;
despise thy tete a tetes by candle light,
despise the thought that thee wert Mr Right;
despise thy visage and thy lust for praise.
Here in gay Paree I live again!
My love for thee is now dead as the dodo,
in Notre Dame I hang out by The Seine
and hath no grief that thee hath lost thy mojo.
Smiles, oh cheers! A love bereft of pain;
oh thee ne'er rang my bell like Quasimodo.

Too long again. It was late. I'll try again ASAP


Dear John, you're done

Go and catch a taxi now
Pack your bags and take a hike
Tell me where the car keys are
You can keep your motor bike.
Get out of here with your singing
I can hear the doorbell ringing

I find
Your mind

Typical of a certain kind.

After I’ve born deranged fights,
Things invisible to me,
Fighting all the days and nights
All over ancient history;
Next, you bring your friends to tell me
You’re a wonder. Try to sell me

Hot air.
Take care

That’s a line I will not wear.

Now’s the time for you to go;
Get your boots on, move your feet,
One more thing; you ought to know
If we two should ever meet.
Don’t try to speak. You’ll soon get a
Summons and a lawyer’s letter.

Just see
You’ll be

Hung out to dry, and I’ll be free.

Here's one I wrote quite a while ago:

Edna St Vincent Millay at the Supermarket
“I, being born a woman and oppressed”


I, being born a woman and oppressed
By endless preparation of huge meals
Am forced to heave this shopping cart on wheels
That contradict my will as though possessed.
I bear this load to stimulate your zest
For amorous adventures; shopping steals
My energy for better things. It feels
As if I have to pass your mother’s test.
Don’t think that I can be a cook and whore.
One or the other is your option here.
I doubt that when you ask the cook for more
The whore will be dessert for you my dear.
I find your gluttony a frightful bore
The parting of our ways is very near.

Forget Not, Yet

Forget not yet how we have striven,
Though many times our hearts were riven,
Through fights and breakups, all forgiven,
Forget not yet.

Forget not yet our happy days,
Before you seemed to change your ways,
Your doctor says it’s just a phase,
Forget not yet.

Forget not yet the night I went
To pay your bail, the money spent,
They said you’d loitered with intent,
Oh, Hell. Forget.

-- Frank

Love that Frank.

From Lucinda, To Her Lover at the Wars

Tell me not, Sweet, thou think to find,
Should thou return to me
That my chaste breast and quiet mind
Are still a nunnery.

And since thou seek the battlefield
And shun the wedding bed,
Take thy sword, thy horse, thy shield,
And marry them instead.

Yet know 'twas not alone the war
To blame for such an end.
I might have loved thee, Dear, much more,
Loved I not thy best friend.

Comp 2593: William Shakespeare’s Dear John

It’s not because you’re bald (though hair is good).
It’s not because you’re fat with all that drinking.
It’s not because you can’t do what you could
Before, before you messed it up with thinking.
It’s not because you make a lot of noise.
It’s not because you like a bit of rough.
It’s not because you fool around with boys
And then pretend you don’t – the usual stuff.
I’ll tell you what it is. It’s all this ART,
It’s all this POETRY, it’s all this SHITE.
You like it better when we stay apart
Because it gives you extra time to write.
I’ve found a guy who’s culture-free and funny,
A simple guy who’s into making money.

I think there are a lot of reasons why this will not win. One is, of course,that it's not good enough. Two is that the rude word may be too rude for Lucy. And three might be that I have entered it for a competition before. I think I may have, but I can't remember what competition that might have been. Any of you help here.

I have sent this in but I think I might try again under the name of Phoebe Flood.

Marion, I laughed out loud.

Maryann, glad you liked it. I blush to admit I laughed when she tells him to marry his sword, horse and shield. :o

John, I love it. Can't imagine "shite" is so naughty these days--especially since "shite," to me, anyway, sounds more poetic than "shit".
Do people really use pseudonyms? Go for it, Phoebe!

This is a limerick by Bob Conquest. I assume other Spherians agree with you about these being cuddly words

A usage that's seldom got right
Is when to say 'shit' and when 'shite',
And many a chap
Will fall back on 'crap'
Which is vulgar, evasive and trite.

Don't worry, John

Whether it’s dried out or puddly,
Is flushed or thrown out or tracked muddily,
Is oblong or balled,
Whatever it’s called,
We’ll never regard it as cuddly.

Frank

Nice one, Frank!

John, Thanks for your earlier comments about my Speccie effort on Diogenes -- also for letting it be known that I am not a Bill Greenwell alias.

Much enjoyed your Simeon Stylites, though am still looking for a dictionary which contains "losel."

Despite editing the quarterly light verse ezine Lighten Up Online I have had a real battle fighting the barrage of technology conspiring to keep me off this site. So this could well be my last-ever appearance here.

Am off to post (snail mail for me!) my Dear John letter to Lucy Vickery. If I can master the art of cutting, pasting and temper control I might try to put it up here later!

We met one day in the pouring rain
Upon the great Gromboolian plain,
And all through one of those wintry nights
You made me shriek, you made me roar
Like waves that beat on the rocky shore.
You took me to the towering heights.
We rocked the house in Chankly Bore.
But then, as we lay in the darkest dark,
I saw what I thought was the fiery spark
Of a swift, post-coital Craven A
Its tip illuminating the night.
But it appeared unusually bright.
Still, I fell asleep in the gentle ray
Of that so peculiar light.

I've hung around with some awful creeps:
Flashy sods in bull-barred jeeps;
Wine snobs; self-important bores
And those who just want in your drawers.
And I've spent many a midnight hour
In Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
Crying and wondering what went wrong.
But you O Dong!
Are a single perfect rose that grows
Among the dung, but alas, dear Dong
I cannot take the luminous Nose!

Martin, losel is a good enough word for Philip Larkin so it's good enough for me . Larkin got it from his long time lady friend. Oh I do hope you come to this site again. Initially I had some trouble but once the technology begins to recognise you it gets easier. Keep the UK delegation growing.

Clive, you'll have to hack and hew your poem down to sixteen lines if you want to win the untold riches on offer.

Oh, and let me tell anyone who doesn't know, that Marion Shore's excellent effort for this week's competition was commended. Anagrams next week.

Here is a Dear John which may come as a surprise to Shakespeare scholars --

When I consider how I wrote each play
You ever claimed as yours, you worthless blighter,
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth I say
It is to love a thankless, third-rate writer.
Know this, my self-styled Bard, you sore abuse
The one you know is author of your work,
The one whose name you will not let me use.
You cheating, ingrate, balding, little berk!
No more I’ll grasp your withered, blunted quill
And shape love’s torrid lines upon your bed,
Nor strive to grind out other lines that will
Be claimed to be your copyright instead.
By this Dark Lady you are now forsaken.
I’m off, -- to write for cash and Francis Bacon.