[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.

[Roger Slater]

Dorothy Parker rewrites "To His Coy Mistress"

Maggots will eat you.
Coffins are small.
Death will defeat you;
It's foolish to stall!
We live, then it's over;
No kisses, no woo.
We'll fertilize clover.
So hurry, let's screw!

[John Whitworth]

Roger, get that IN!

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Roger, get that IN!

Funny, that's just what his erstwhile coy mistress ended up saying to Marvell.

[Jayne Osborn]

John Betjeman writes The Charge of the Light Brigade

It’s half a league on, it’s half a league on,
Thundering, blundering into the sun.
There are cannon to left of us, cannon to right,
Cannon in front of us – not a fair fight!

We rode to this valley, six hundred in all,
But Oh! it’s a certainty most men will fall.
“Forward the Light Brigade!” somebody shouted.
Importunate band! We are sure to be routed.

It isn’t our place to enquire of ‘them’, Why?
It’s theirs but to do and it’s ours but to die!
Noble six hundred! We’ll all soon be dead
from the ominous, ominous fighting ahead.

Oh! Who would have thought it, that some would survive?
The luckiest pluckiest few are alive.
What cheeriness, knowing my death’s been delayed,
And now I’ve resigned from the damned Light Brigade.

[Marion Shore]

The Raven rewritten by Robert Frost

What bird this is, I think I know,
it's black enough to be a crow,
with beady eye and pointed tail –
I think it is a raven though.

It flew in from the winter gale,
when I went out to get the mail,
and perched upon a Grecian bust
I picked up at a rummage sale.

"Tell me, bird," I said, "why must
you haunt my simple home? I trust
you could find churchyards by the score,
and Gothic manses full of dust –

Besides, you’re messing up the floor.
So kindly show yourself the door—"
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”