[John Whitworth]

Back to verse this week. I shall celebrate by winning. Just you see.


No. 2766: taking fright
You are invited to submit a poem about a phobia (16 lines maximum). Email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 26 September.

[John Whitworth]

Aviophobia

We’re booked to go by Squalidair.
The bloody plane is just not there
For hours and hours and God knows why.
Without a plane we cannot fly.

I love a ship, a train, a car.
I cannot love a winged cigar
Plus passport/ticket/visa crap
Plus baggage magicked off the map,

Nor yet the deserts we have made
Where aeroplanes can ply their trade:
The tacky bars, the pricey shops,
The toilets blocked with horrid slops,

The queues that snake from here to here,
The smell of sweat, the stink of fear,
The fear we do not care to name,
Of crashing in a sheet of flame.

[Mary Moore]

Glossophobia

To speak in public’s not my thing,
it fills my heart with dread.
From the time I know that I must speak,
I’m sensing doom ahead.

Perhaps I will forget my lines
and completely lose my place.
A teleprompter might screw up
and fail to keep apace.

My voice might crack, my nose might run,
Some gas I might emit.
My hand might tremble, the pointer shake,
and signal I’m unfit.

In the rare event, none of these occur
and, in the end, there’s applause,
I feel as if I’ve survived a war
and risked my life for the cause.

[Lance Levens]

Bathophobia

I'm not going in there, mommy. There's water on the wall.
I know I'm dirty. There's mud in my ears.
But you just don't know about all my fears.
I'm not going in that tub and that's all!

I don't care. So there's a small garden between my toes.
I love gardens. Gardens are a good thing.
Eden was a garden. Gardens are where birds sing.
It does look odd, though--where my big toe grows


baby carrots and itsy bitsy spuds. OK, let's rethink.
The kids at school don't want garden toes
mucking about. Will I get water up my nose?
OK, no nose water. But first, a trial run in the kitchen sink?

[Brian Allgar]

They say I’m lazy, feckless, workshy, good-for-nothing, idle,
They’ve cut my benefits until I’m nearly suicidal.
“Get up and go to work!” they cry, “you need an occupation.”
I’ve bought alarm clocks, but they give me tintinnabulation.

It’s really not my fault, I’m not a skiving, scrounging berk;
I simply have this allergy that means I cannot work.
On reading ‘Jobs Available’, my body burns and tingles,
And I’m debilitated by another bout of shingles.

The very thought of office jobs - those dreadful nine-to-fives -
Can bring me out in painful rashes, eczema and hives.
I’ve tried explaining my predicament to social workers,
But all they do is sneer, and say “We’ve had enough of shirkers.”

At last I’ve found a sympathetic doc who knows his onions;
He’s signed me off, describing all my pustules, boils and bunions:
“This man’s unfit to work, I’ve never seen a case that’s Job-ier;
He suffers from a rare disease called Ergasiophobia.”

[George Simmers]

This one may puzzle American Spherians.

Toxophobia

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 Grundies 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.

[Jayne Osborn]

Oh yes, 'The Archers', George; stuff of nightmares.


I break out in an awful sweat.
I cannot sleep at night.
You won’t believe the state I get
myself into. The fright
envelops me till I can’t think;
I hyperventilate.
I pour myself another drink.
I’m terrified... THE DATE –

the date by which I have to send
a poem to the judge
is looming up. I haven’t penned
a word; my brain is sludge.
(This phobia – is it named yet?)
I also wonder whether
I would be cured if I could get
my bloody act together!