Eratosphere - The Oldie 'Lying in Bed' Results. *Wins for Jerome and Bill*

Congratulations, Jerome and Bill. This was a super topic, I thought. From the poems on the thread, I also thought John, Frank, Bob, Doug (and even I) might be in with a chance. Not a single Hon Mensh among us -- and a non-rhyming winner in there, to boot!
Never mind. But well done to our guys for upholding the sphere. :)

Next comp on new thread.

Jayne

The Oldie Competition
by Tessa Castro

In Competition no 158 you were invited to write a poem called ‘Lying in Bed’. Edith Sitwell’s mother, Lady Ida (an earl’s daughter), would lie ‘late in bed in a bedroom heavy with the scent of discarded gardenias and tuberoses, reading French novels’. Her insomniac father, Sir George (a baronet), planned to publish a book about lying awake, called The Twenty-Seven Postures of Sir George R Sitwell. So it was little wonder that the poet later took to her bed like a fish to water, writing and drinking by turns.
Such practical disadvantages occurred to Rob Rollett, pondering a statement by Chesterton about lying in bed: ‘It would be / An altogether perfect and supreme experience / If only one had a coloured pencil / Long enough to draw on the ceiling.’ Mr Rollett disagreed. The pencils would not make for ease, he thought, ‘One might as well lie in a tree!’
Some lighted upon the other meaning of ‘lie’, most economically Janet Mattacks in an entertaining entry, whose four lines went: ‘You were wonderful, darling, / She said, / Lying / In bed.’
Commiserations to them and to Paul Elmhirst, who wrote some evocative lines, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the ideal bedtime reading bonus prize of a Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary going to Jerome Betts.

Is yours a spine that bends like willow,
Strength sapped by eiderdown and pillow?
Long lie-ins waste both wit and muscle,
Life’s prizes come to those who bustle.

When prone, the outlook’s horizontal,
And mouse-sized snags grow mastodontal
So wimps who linger under sheeting
Will fail and flop and take a beating.

Ah yes, young business push and shovers,
Beware the place a duvet covers.
No boss or parsnips will you butter
In bed, that road towards debt and gutter!

Such sound advice! I beg you, take it!
Get up, and out, and on, and make it,
Like me, a whizz-kid tired of whizzing,
With time, at last, for good long zizzing.
Jerome Betts

You taunt me with your absence
You come fleetingly, and so
I plead with you. But when I want you most
You go

Ten unexpected minutes in the evening
You won’t stay long and rarely for the night
Elusive, fickle, won’t you lie with me?
You might

I crave the strength you give me
The calm, the dreams, vitality and peace
Just when I feel I have you constantly
You cease

Why do we fight, why do we always struggle?
My need for you despairing, ever, deep
My unpredictable bedfellow
Sleep
Linda Fawke

The amount of the bed I need’s half-ish,
Not far from pure 50 per cent,
So when you accuse me of being a starfish,
I am not very content:

It’s true that what I want is equal
To what you would wish on your side –
But in dreams, when I re-live my life’s painful prequel
(Though there’s nothing to hide),

There may be some times I’m invading
Your foetal and personal space.
You shrink in sleep. If I’ve episodes raiding
Your rest, now is it the case

That I’m greedy? I don’t do much thrashing –
Or bump you, or pummel and pound you.
Yes I love you, I do. And I think you are smashing.
But you have the duvet around you.
Bill Greenwell

Under the quilt
your heat thaws my frozen feet
softening my body like wax
as I slide into sleep.

Drawn like a moth to the light
you turn a page
I hear the rustle of paper
like the flutter of wings against glass.
You’ve travelled to a strange land
beyond my reach.

I float out on the tide,
travel through the night
swirling dream-waters where you cannot go.

Held in the circle of the reading lamp
side by side
xxxxxxxxxwe lie alone.
Jenna Plewes