[John Whitworth]

Substantive Modifications

My love is pulchritudinous, proportionate and glamorous.
She’s captivating, fascinating, feminine and amorous.
She’s scintillating, titillating, precious, paradisical,
Luxurious, voluptuous, delectable and physical.

She’s charming, cosmopolitan, sophisticated, thoroughbred
Splendiferous, magniloquent, illustrious and go-ahead.
She’s entertaining, debonair, delightful, indispensable,
Judicious, level-headed, sage, intelligent and sensible.

A loveless life is listless, luckless, feckless, sick and festering,
Malodorous, morbiferous, mephitical and westering,
Dysfunctional, detestable, destructive, deleterious,
Inadequate, impractical, unworthy and unserious.

All poets of a principled and passionate sincerity
Find well-selected adjectives contribute to their verity.
Ingenious deployments are sublime and unforgettable.
A Hemingway of verse would be obnoxious and regrettable!

[Douglas G. Brown]

John,
Very good. It sounds like the style of W.S. Gilbert, with a touch of Cole Porter.

[Nigel Mace]

Far too good a tribute to W. S. G. to qualify as duff in any way, John! It's impossible to resist trying to sing it.

[Brian Allgar]

John, for a man with such a limited vocabulary, that's terrific!

[John Whitworth]

I am the very model of a modern Major-general. Sheer pastiche.

[Graham King]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

I am the very model of a modern Major-general. Sheer pastiche.

Fine work, John, whether as pastiche or not!


I floss my nostrils daily with a toothpick and some thread
I’ve spun from a year’s-worth of navel-lint;
I keep a Christmas bauble in that socket in my head
My glass eye fell from: My, but it does glint!
I shave with a veg-peeler then I peel veg with the same -
For two such tools would be a shame and waste;
I wear the clothes I sleep in, which I found dumped in a skip.
I eat raw silt; it has an earthy taste.
I never use a lighter – shove my ciggies in the fire
Held between my toes: it makes my tootsies brown
While igniting the nicotine (I often smoke a pair
At once, so as to keep the effort down.)
I leave cats in my dentist’s waiting room to run about
(Boy, you should hear folks shriek at all their play!)
Then trundle home in someone else’s car I’ve just picked out;
All this outlines my average fun-filled day.

[Douglas G. Brown]

OLD NUMBER 7 Positively Cures Gonorrhea, Gleet, and Mucous Discharges From the Urethra

( Label inscription on a bottle of a 1920’s quack gonorrhea cure )

Disciple of raw egg and oyster,
You made seduction your career.
With rich old broads, you’d romp and roister
Until you caught the gonorrhea.

Your life seemed happy, short, and sweet;
But now it’s dismal, tough, and long -
Since your affliction with the gleet
Made mucous dribble from your schlong.

In retrospect, a virgin blonde
You should have sought; so you could marry her.
What used to be your magic wand
Is now your wizened water carrier.

You’ve burned the bridge that leads to Heaven.
Though Hell awaits, remember this;
You’ll always have Old Number Seven
To quench the burning when you piss.