[Roger Slater]

Dorothy Parker rewrites To His Coy Mistress

Men seldom make passes
At girls with dead asses.

[Jayne Osborn]

John Masefield writes The Ballad of Reading Gaol

We must go down to the gallows again, to the lonely gallows and see
This wretched man, like many here, who never will be free:
With the wistful eyes and the swollen purple throat, with blood on his hands;
For each man kills the thing he loves, which nobody understands.

We must go down to the gallows again, to the gallows where bad men die,
But I’ll look up at that tent of blue we prisoners call the sky,
And the man who killed the thing he loved, the man whose life they’re taking,
Will swing from a rope and cleanse his soul of sin, while hearts are breaking.

We must go down to the gallows again, where the man who used a knife
Will pay the price, in a pit of shame, for taking a woman’s life.
And for those who do such deeds as this the end is always the same:
A trial, a cell, then hanged by the neck, and a grave without a name.

Oscar Wilde writes Sea Fever

I really miss the English coast,
xxFor sea and sky are blue,
And sea and sky are on my mind
xxPerpetually, it’s true.
Tall ships and stars, white sails and wind,
xxI miss all those things too.

I really must go down again
xxTo hear the sea-gulls cry,
To see the spume and feel the spray
xxAnd watch the clouds roll by.
And all I ask is P and Q
xxWhen it’s time for me to die!

[John Whitworth]

Very nice, Jayne.

[Ann Drysdale]

Seconded. But still puzzling over dead asses. I know that "over there" an ass is an arse, but...? Is it biblical?

[John Whitworth]

Well, I suppose if your arse is dead, so is the rest of you. Perhaps too a comment on Marvell's sexual practises. But do we know them? A hottie is, I believe, Australian for a hot water bottle. Hence:

Men seldom make hotties
Of moribund botties.

[Ann Drysdale]

I know that apart from being specific to the gluteal area, the ass, especially the sorry (as distict from hopeful?) ass, signifies the whole self. Why, we Brits do that - viz. get your arse out of here. I always used to wonder why we spoke of "head" of cattle when quantifying a herd, since their arses were, on balance, so much more valuable.

But in this particular case, are these the all-embracing arses, and actually dead (necrophilia?) or are we still below the belt and referring (if I may be so bold) to the lady-garden, and hence to the implication of frigidity. This, though brings the problem that the gentleman has to make the pass before he can make the judgement.

I think it would make more sense (and I think Dottie would back me up here) that "Men don't repeat passes..."

Do you get my indelicate drift?

[Janice D. Soderling]

Such elegant writing, Ann. Truly a pleasure to read and re-read.

I hesitate to be quick and crude, but (and I am willing to be corrected by the ugly but more knowing gender) in my erstwhile homeland the expressions, " out to get a little ass, hoping to get a little ass", ad infinitum) stem from the proposition of being literally hands-on in one's endeavor, that is to say, that the hands cup the buttocks and forcefully draw the anterior part of the posterior toward the perpetrator's equally nether region.

[basil ransome-davies]

Peeking through the veil of genteel euphemisms at a fundamental noun & popular synecdoche, I am moved to recommend 'Kiss Your Ass Goodbye' by hardass author Charles Willeford.

[Brian Allgar]

And then there was that Elizabethan policewoman who caused Shakespeare to write "The Law is a piece of ass!"

[Roger Slater]

My Dorothy Parker doesn't work, I guess, but I dreamed of winning with under ten words.

I have a "piece of ass" meditation in Per Contra, by the way. The first of the two limericks is on point:

Dame Rhetoric

Synecdoche means when we name
A thing by a part of the same,
As folks with no class
Say "a fine piece of ass"
When referring to all of the dame.

Metonymy's almost the same.
It means when we give things the name
Of something related:
"A skirt that I dated"
Refers not to clothes but a dame.