[Jayne Osborn]

Lovely! Tessa has chosen a great topic this month, after the prose comp last time around, in which Brian got a well-deserved HM and the rest of us got zilch. (Well, we're poets, so poetry comps suit us better, natch.)

Now, who will choose lying (as in lazing) in bed, and who will go for lying (as in telling lies) in bed, I wonder? A lot of both goes on!
This one's going to be fun.

Jayne

COMPETITION No. 158
by Tessa Castro

The way we sleep tells a lot about us, scientists say. So a poem, please, called ‘Lying in Bed’. Maximum 16 lines.

Entries to ‘Competition 158’ by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), email (comps@theoldie.co.uk) or fax (020 7436 8804) by 14 December.
Don’t forget to include your postal address.

[John Whitworth]

Lying in Bed

You’ve climbed the stairs to Bedfordshire
And left the world behind,
The wooden hill to Bedfordshire
Where all are deaf and blind.
They speak the truth in Bedfordshire,
Of bliss and ruth in Bedfordshire,
Where mind speaks out to mind,
And no-one is unkind.

Across the skies to Bedfordshire
You’ve sailed without a chart,
To dream in deepest Bedfordshire
Where all the passions start.
Lie down in bright, white Bedfordshire,
Put on the night in Bedfordshire,
And find a place apart,
To listen to your heart.

[Roger Slater]

Lying In Bed

At night I like to lie in bed,
pillow underneath my head,
blanket pulled up to my chin,
dreaming of a mortal sin.
And may that dream be now confessed:
I'm often, in that dream, undressed,
unbridled, unafraid, unshy.
At night in bed I like to lie.

[John Whitworth]

Sharp and to the point, Roger. One of your best.

[Lance Levens]

I will not die in Old Tenille where the cotton lies in rows,
But I lie in bed in Old Tenille--and I know she knows.

She knows another's in my bed as I lie in Old Tenille.
She'll curse my name and heaven dread as we allemand the reel.

As I lie in bed in old Tenille, I cannot face tomorrow.
The fiddlers' wink and the banjo's plinking be to me such sorrow.

I will not die in Old Tenille, nor be a woman's fool.
So I sharpen up my blade tonight to teach someone my rule.

[Brian Allgar]

Lying in Bed

It’s true that I’d be lying if I said
I find it easy getting out of bed.
There goes the damned alarm! Once more I struggle
To turn it off. Oh, how I yearn to snuggle
Beneath the downy pillows and the covers,
And dream of past insatiable lovers.

There’s what’s-her-name, the barmaid from “The Rose”,
And thingummy, who loved to suck my toes,
And all those girls who came to see my etchings ...
Forgive me for these geriatric lechings,
But when you’re my age, chewing on a denture,
It’s memories that keep you from dementia.

Where did it go, that once-abundant crumpet?
I’m now reduced to blowing my own trumpet.
But duty calls; I have to walk the dog,
And write my “Son of Casanova ” blog.

[Graham King]

John, I find that verse of yours lovely!
My Dad often said 'Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire' when I was a kid.


Lying in Bed

“I cannot lie:
‘Twas truly I
Cut down the cherry tree,” he said,
As he lay sleeping in their bed.
She sighed; that same recurring dream
Was clearly playing in his head.

“Oh George,” she nudged
(He slightly budged),
“I know by now - you are honest;
But me, I want to get some rest!”
She frowned; this subject, she had found,
Made him (asleep) a nightly pest:

“Can’t you forget – at last?
That tree is in the past!
Please at least try –
To LET IT LIE!”

[John Whitworth]

Thank you, Graham. Actually, though I have come across many people with childhood memores of the phrase, I came across it quite lately, in a novel I think. Lovely evocative phrase that makes Bedfordshire like Timbuctoo. Whereas in reality (huh!) it is nothing of the sort. It's like pleasantly finding that Whitstable is redolent of romance to somebody living in New York.

[David Anthony]

Lovely poem, John; too good for the comp.
Betjemanesque.

[Douglas G. Brown]

She had turned seventeen, and was Homecoming Queen;
Athletic, and sweetly beguiling.
He was triple her age, both a wit and a sage;
A gentleman, pleasantly smiling.

Endowed like a horse, he was eager, of course;
So, right away after their wedding,
In bed they'd be lying, romanticaly trying
(And pretty soon, wore out the bedding).

It's her forty-fifth year, and her innermost fear -
That his lust for her body is dying -
He denies, but her ears disbelieve what they hear;
And she knows that he simply is lying.

As she lies in repose, she undoubtedly knows
That Thanatos soon will come Reaping.
But until then she'll lie with her withered old guy,
Where they now share their bed just for sleeping.