Eratosphere - Speccie Competition Taking Fright

Competition: Taking fright
Lucy Vickery
06 October 2012

Chris O'Carroll and George Simmers (a worthy addition to the Ambridge oeuvre started by Kit Wrights'a Walter's Willy poem) win money. Bill Greenwell, Brian Allgar and John Sampson (Welcome!) nearly do. Well done all!

In Competition No. 2766 you were invited to submit a poem about a phobia. John Samson’s account of what strikes me as a perfectly reasonable fear of Ikea flatpacks stood out in what was another cracking entry. Bill Greenwell, Brian Allgar, Josephine Boyle and W.J. Webster also shone.
The prizewinners are printed below and rewarded with £25 each; Alan Millard takes the bonus fiver.

I have no need to dig or dive or delve
Into the root or cause of my malaise,
The legacy of London 2012
Will mar forever my remaining days;
I fear those hostile promptings: ‘Let’s rejoice
And follow in the footsteps of the best!
Embrace some taxing torture of your choice
And join the joggers, gymnasts and the rest!’
Now terror fills my breast when I behold
These horrifying spectres flying past
On trainers, skateboards, cycles, young and old,
Whose frantic need for speed leaves me aghast.
Oh, let me vegetate and drown in drink
This dread of movement, moderate or aerobic
For ‘fear of motion’ is the mark, I think,
Of how it feels to be kinetophobic.
Alan Millard

This nudist camp is an idyllic spot,
And so was Eden, site of man’s first sin.
I’d like to venture out, but I dare not.
Medorthophobia urges me, ‘Stay in!’

Outside my cabin window I observe
All ages and degrees of pulchritude.
What if I join them, and some toothsome curve
Begets a lewdly upright attitude?

I’ve shed my clothes. I’m standing at the door.
I’m trembling, lightheaded. My heart races,
Fearing that firm friend I’ve been grateful for
So often at less public times and places.

A layer of sunscreen is all I wear
(I slathered it on thickly, didn’t skimp)
As I inch out the doorway with this prayer:
‘Lord, I’m medorthophobic. Keep me limp.’
Chris O’Carroll

One thing made Henry mightily upset —
The final letter of the alphabet.
In algebra at school he’d start to cry
If questions needed more than x and y.
He couldn’t say or write the dreaded letter;
Despite analysis things got no better.
His garden boasted many a rose and dahlia,
Yet never once a -innia or a-alea;
A girl he loved the moment he’d first seen her,
He promptly dropped on hearing, ‘Hi, I’m -ena’;
A Francophile, he strolled the Champs Elysées,
But steered well clear of A-navour and Bi-et;
In Africa he toured from Chad to Gambia,
Though not -imbabwe, -an-ibar or -ambia.
His fatal fall led everyone to blame
His failure to deploy a -immer frame.
Roger Theobald

At seven, from the neighbouring room,
News headlines first, then sure as doom,
That tune presaging mental pain
With jaunty chutzpah spews again
Relentlessly from the machine.
Vile ‘Barwick Green’.

Calm start. Jill plans the village fête —
But still I hyperventilate.
Salt sweat’s erupting from my brow
Though it’s just Grundys burbling now
About a cow.

But it will come, I know it will,
That sound as screeching as it’s shrill,
That sound my nightmares know too well.
I hear the voice of Linda Snell.
I am in Hell.
George Simmers

In Alfred Hitchcock’s filmic prime
He dealt in every kind of crime.
All methods that unhinge or kill
Were grist to the Director’s mill.
He watched unblinking as the gore
Ran swirling on the shower floor,
And blood pours out without reserve
Throughout his directorial oeuvre.
But one thing got to him: the sight
Of eggs would turn him deathly white.
That ovoid he could not abide,
And thoughts of what might lie inside
Would in his quaking mind invoke
The plasmic white, the oozing yolk.
It was his horror beyond words.
And eggs, of course, are laid by Birds.
Noel Petty

I’d gladly reveal what my phobia was if it paid to,
it makes me feel sweaty and nervous just thinking about it.
I haven’t been waiting in patience for ages to out it —
the reason I’m not going to tell you’s because I’m afraid to!

I can’t see what telling the world here would serve as an aid to,
Though clearly my life would be brighter and better without it
I’d gladly reveal what my phobia was if it paid to,
It makes me feel sweaty and nervous just thinking about it.

The fact is I wouldn’t divulge it unless I were made to.
For millions, yes, I admit, I would probably shout it,
but would it be worth it for your extra fiver? I doubt it
(It’s hardly a topic I’d want to write some serenade to!)
I’d gladly reveal what my phobia was if it paid to.
G. Chadwick