Eratosphere - LitRev 'Adultery' results

None of us in the line-up this month, AND I’ve had to type the whole flippin' page out manually again. I wouldn’t mind quite so much if there was a Spherian to congratulate. (Tut! I wish they’d catch up with the technology. :( Ho hum.)
Here’s the report by Deputy Editor Tom Fleming:

This month’s subject was ‘adultery’. Curiously, this provoked far more entries than any other subject has done. Mae Scanlan wins first prize and £300; J Garth Taylor wins £150 and second prize; the others printed receive £10 each. For next month, please write a limerick (or a sequence of them) involving royalty or a member of the aristocracy (living, dead, or fictional); entries to arrive by 25 October. (See new thread.)

First Prize
Adultery by Mae Scanlan

It seems a silly, trifling thing;
Perhaps it’s just a one-time fling,
A mem’ry shared, a sudden wink,
Or maybe just too much to drink,
A quick reaction to a touch;
You think it won’t amount to much,
But flesh is weak; it loads the decks,
And there you are – you’re having sex.
Or maybe this is more the gist:
A sense there’s something you have missed,
For things are not so good at home;
Reluctantly, you’re ripe to roam.
But once you’ve made it in the sack
You cannot, ever, take it back.
Hearts are broken, fam’lies busted,
All because somebody lusted.
No amount of cash or clout
Will be enough to wipe it out.
It causes pain, divorces, tears,
It ruins names, and halts careers.
And so it makes good sense to read
The warning signs, and then take heed.
We do so with our heads and hearts;
It’s just those other body parts.

Second Prize
Mea Culpa by J Garth Taylor

My mea culpa thing went rather well.
The media were happy with my show.
I told them what I thought I ought to tell
To satisfy the masses’ ‘need to know’.

I pleaded for forgiveness for the pain
my infidelities have caused my wife.
I blubbered that I must have been insane
to break a vow I valued more than life.

I wiped a tear and sobbed about the shame
Inflicted on my kids, on whom I dote,
My dear old mom and dad, the family name,
And those who’ve always given me their vote.

I blamed my indiscretions on the snares
That Satan always sets to catch us in.
I thanked all those who joined with me in prayer,
Imploring God to keep me safe from sin.

But now the show is over and I pray
That all this public baring of the soul
And self-abasing grovelling will pay,
And I will soon be rising in the polls.

The Sport of Kings by Noel Petty

The noted Dr Comfort once contended
(His feisty future the still unachieved)
That length of life of progeny depended
Upon the age of parents when conceived.

For data he unearthed long pedigrees
Of peerage and nobility, but found
Bar sinisters throughout their family trees.
True parentage was rather shaky ground.

Instead, he tried the stud book, and behold!
A feast of bloodstock records met his eye.
Births, deaths and parentage precisely told,
Data no gentleman would falsify.

It did the trick, his monograph took wing,
And we may draw a rider from this tale:
Cheating on wives and archives is one thing,
Cheating on horseflesh is beyond the pale.

Adulterous by D A Prince

She’s welcome to the drudgeries of love –
washing his socks, his plates, dealing with banks,
insurance, pensions, endless tedium of
his ageing aunts, not much by way of thanks;
their holidays (the annual compromise),
the faults all hers, juggling his mounting debts,
counting their wedded bliss the best of ties,
surrendering herself with no regrets.

She has skimmed milk: I take the cream, by choice.
He knows, appreciates the difference –
times only for each other, how my voice
renews him, re-awakens very sense, <--I think, perhaps, that should be 'every' but this is how it appears
all thrill and novelty, and finally
I hold the ace, the card of being free.