[John Whitworth]

good week for Spherians. Besides all the usual suspects, some relatively new friends among the near-misses. What is Chris O'Carroll on?

Lucy Vickery 22 June 2013
In Competition 2802 you were invited to supply a poem on the subject of your choice in which the final letter of each line becomes the first letter of the next line.
As usual with this type of technical challenge, strenuous accusations of sadism were directed judge-wards: many entrants echoed Brian Allgar’s sentiments below.
It was a reasonable turnout, though, and I hope that £30 apiece for the winners will offset the agony somewhat. Honourable mentions go to Bill Greenwell, Janet Kenny, Graham King and Tim Raikes.
W.J. Webster’s entry, in which form and content work well together, earns him the bonus fiver.

Why is it that I chase my tail,
Loopily as any dog,
Going round to no avail
Like a disconnected cog?
Goodness knows I’ve done my best
To change my ways and look ahead:
Driven, though, maybe obsessed —
Dammit, I turn back instead.
Does this failure to advance,
Ever circling round what’s gone,
Explain how this deluded dance
Excludes me from what’s going on?
Now’s a time I scarcely know
Whizzing past too fast to catch:
How can I hope to stop its flow
Whilst itching to get back to scratch?
W.J. Webster

Wool, cotton, silk — all three have polymeric
Chain molecules. Chain restaurants provide
Eating experiences bland, generic.
Convicts on chain gangs get to work outside.

Exemplifying gaudy rap-star bling,
Gold chains have likewise gleamed round royal
necks.
Some laws now smile on rights the wedding ring
Grants to a ball and chain of either sex.

Xenophobes dream of chain-link border fences
Surmounted by barbed wire, electrified.
Dealing in hoary get-rich-quick pretences,
Sharks take chain-letter suckers for a ride.

Embroiderers are deft with a chain stitch.
Hawaii is an archipelago
Or island chain. The human race is rich,
High-tech. Could chain reactions bring us low?
Chris O’Carroll

Yes, my ad in Gardeners’ Weekly, where I hint a shade obliquely —
yet with longing — for a soulmate who’ll consent to share my life
ends my celibate existence, I’ve abandoned all resistance;
every day I dig for victory in my plot to find a wife.

Entre nous, I’ve been a ‘chips’ man, ‘other veg won’t pass my lips’ man,
now a Damascene conversion’s made me yearn to eat my greens,
so it’s calabrese and marrow from the coster-monger’s barrow,
winter cabbage, sprouting broccoli with peas and runner beans.

Slicing, sautéing and grating, I can feel myself mutating,
growing leaves as I’m transformed into a vegetable state;
every pleasure life dispenses to a brassica chimensis
seems to sow the seeds of passion and the need to propagate.

Eager for an instant wedding, being raised for early bedding,
germination will be rapid and what’s more I’ll drive away
your proclivity to scurvy. If indeed you’re cute and curvy
you’ve a lifetime guarantee you’ll get your healthyfive-a-day.
Sylvia Fairley

I can’t believe I’m doing this again!
‘Nevermore!’ I cried, like some daft raven.
Now here I am, unfed, unwashed, unshaven,
Nibbling a biscuit for the hunger pain,
Nervous and irritable, seeking letters —
So many of them, and so few that fit
The words I need. Another ciggy lit
To calm my nerves. Damn those sadistic setters!
Sheer misery, these tricksy competitions;
Such desperate mental strain to find ideas,
Sustained by far too many fags and beers,
Scratching my bonce on masochistic missions.

So harken to my end-of-tether cry:
‘You think I’m doing this again? Not I!’
Brian Allgar

What wonders can I work to win a prize
Eluding all, except a happy few?
What tricks will dazzle Rhadamanthine eyes
So that the bonus fiver is mine too?
On many a winter evening I would sit
Trying to fashion something of perfection;
Now under summer skies my musings flit
To brilliancies that would reject rejection.
Nothing, alas, emerges from my brain,
Nothing that would delight a Zoilean mind.
Despair is close. I try and try again.
No Muse-inspired marvels can I find.
Do others have such hard and fruitless times
Striving and seeking, never giving in?
No doubt they capture more propitious rhymes
Sure of selection, certainties to win.
Max Ross