Speccie Vice Verse by 6th June
 

Well, most of us were there, Bill, Martin Parker and Bazza serially, and Chris O'Carroll, Brian Allgar and Jayne. Marion Shore and Robert Schechter nearly made it.

The latest competition is a golden oldie. I remember a single line from a previous run - 'Thou best, besetter, Sloth'. I'm sure we can crack this one.


No. 2750 vice verse
You are invited to provide a poem in praise of one of the seven deadly sins (16 lines max.). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 6 June.

John: PM your email address to me so I can e mail the Lists and Litanies poems to you. Sorry to interrupt. Got to catch a guy where you know he hangs out. I start posting the poems
on Friday.

And don't forget Brendan Beary, who recently started posting with us.

One of the winners was a (very funny) limerick that was in Bumbershoot's fractured verse issue. I wish I had raided my published Bumbershoot stock, since nothing I wrote was as good as that.

Congratulations to the winners!

Mr Beary, you are not forgotten. Haven't I seen your name before?

I remember a single line from a previous run - 'Thou best, besetter, Sloth'.

John, I don't get it. Can you enlighten me?

P.S. In titling this thread, you missed Lucy's pun: "Vice verse"

SLOTH

I never shave, I’m really far too lazy,
Although my wife complains about the stubble.
And competitions - do you think I’m crazy?
Write sixteen lines? No way, it’s too much trouble.

PRIDE

Of all the sins that I display
the one of which I am most proud
and even go so far to say
the Catholic Church should have allowed
and not have classified the sin
which currently it's classified,
because there's really no harm in
possessing it in spades, is pride.
I think the humble envy me,
and envy is a sin as well!
Someday we'll die, I guess, and see
which one of us ends up in hell.

ENVY

I envy your lust,
your pride as well,
your gluttonous ways
that will land you in hell.

I envy your anger,
your sloth and your greed.
Envy? I've got it.
There's six more I need.

LUST

Whenever there's talk about sin,
I'm proud that my sinner within
wakes up from its sloth––yes indeed!––
and fills up with gluttonous greed
to burst out in wrath as it must:
yes, no sin is vaster than lust!

Envy

My dad was just a peasant
With a house that was a hovel,
And it wasn't very pleasant
When we knew we had to grovel

To the rich men in their castles
With their satin and their silk,
When the irritating arseholes
Didn't know the price of milk.

At an ivied Oxford college
Each was learning how to rule
While we picked up scraps of knowledge
At a comprehensive school,

And the lesson that it taught us
Was the only one we mastered,
To instruct our sons and daughters
How A TORY IS A BASTARD.

Roger and Pedro, nice bits of multitasking.

John, I love "castles/arseholes" - modern poetry at its finest.

One thing that slightly worries me about this competition is that we're asked to write in praise of rather than merely about a deadly sin.