[John Whitworth]

Competition: Second thoughts

LUCY VICKERY
SATURDAY, 24TH MARCH 2012

In Competition No. 2739 you were invited to submit a poem lamenting an impulse buy on eBay.
A hair from Justin Bieber’s chest; a colossal concrete brontosaurus; a lifesize poster of Albert Einstein; Franz Kafka’s shirt (with an authenticating Post-it note by Max Brod). These were just a few of the regrettable but hugely entertaining online purchases that featured in a large and lively entry.
Honourable mentions go to Shirley Curran, Mae Scanlan, Gerard Benson and Melissa Balmain. I also liked W.J. Webster’s eBay Blues: ‘Woke up this morning, heard a click inside my head....’
Chris O’Carroll’s magnificent all-singing, all-flopping wall-mounted rubber bass narrowly lost out to Brian Allgar, who nabs the extra fiver. Their fellow winners, printed below, get £30 apiece.

I’d found a record-playing deck,
Pressed ‘BUY’ — the deal was final.
‘Sound-wise, LPs still beat CDs’,
A tenet that’s doctrinal.

I’m quite convinced that, washed and rinsed,
A polish and a shine’ll
Resuscitate to pristine state
My precious horde of vinyl.

I purchased cloths and patent broths
To combat dust and static,
But I forgot how far, God wot,
My life’s procrastinatic.

I cannot lie; the years went by;
Today, I’m less ecstatic —
Begrimed and pawed, my vinyl horde
Still moulders in the attic.
Brian Allgar

Some kitsch achieves so-bad-it’s-good mystique —
The plastic pink flamingo, garden gnome,
Or four-inch-wide cravat of Deco chic.
I’m cool, I’m camp, I decorate my home

With artifacts for which my love’s ironic.
I feign being square in service to my hip,
Arch knowingness in re the faux-iconic,
The bourgeois trinket turned pop-culture quip.

But I should not have bought the rubber bass
That sings and flops on its wall-mounted plaque.
(A sensor activates it as I pass.)
I rue my bid for that piscine knickknack,

Which laughs off my detached sophistication,
My mocking send-up of vulgarity.
That vulgar yokel of a decoration
Conveys somehow that it is mocking me.
Chris O’Carroll

Why did I buy a samovar, a thing I didn’t want,
A Byzantine affair with the dimensions of a font?
Why did I click on BUY IT NOW? What moved my hasty mouse?
The answer: an uxorious desire to please my spouse.
She loves collecting Russian stuff, pre-Soviet, of course —
Some Czarist coins, a painting of a Cossack on a horse,
A solid silver vodka cup whose polished chasing gleams...
A samovar, I thought, would be the present of her dreams.
It came by special courier, a hearty, strapping lad
Who said his name was Rudolph as I signed mine on his pad.
So pleased was I with my beau geste I failed to realise
That he and not the samovar sparked joy in Sybil’s eyes.
They live in Tunbridge Wells, I hear, and run an antique stall,
And where the charging Cossack was is now an empty wall.
I’d fooled myself a samovar would bind her close to me,
But Rudolph with the brawny arms was just her cup of tea.
Basil Ransome-Davies

‘Mint condition guaranteed,’ it said,
‘Sleep Inducer.’ Long bereft of zest
And dying to relax for once in bed,
My bid was rash and higher than the rest.

Tormented by insomnia each night,
I toss and turn and yearn for sweet repose
But, speared and lanced by daybreak’s shafts of light,
I meet each morning cowed and comatose.

At least, at last, my bid bode well I hoped,
A bargain such as this was worth the price,
No longer days of feeling dazed and doped,
Nocturnal torture banished in a trice.

Oh foolish me, fleeced by an eBay crook
Whose promise of sweet dreams and slumbers deep
Turned out to be an illustrated book
With countless prints, on every page, of sheep.
Alan Millard

It wasn’t too old, and it wasn’t too dear.
In the photo (a close-up) the detail was clear
and they’re hard to get hold of, especially this year,
so I bought it.

Then the problems began: it was all to and fro
with transport/delivery, best way to go,
insurance an extra, how fast or how slow,
so I fought it.
With pinging of e-mails each gave our address
and tried to fix dates. It was rather a mess.
It’s the easiest way to go mad, I confess.
Can we sort it?

But we did, and it came, and now that it’s here
I can’t say I like, need or want it. It’s queer
how reality makes virtual yearning so drear.
Who’d have thought it?
D.A. Prince