[Jayne Osborn]

Here's the next competition -- which is no great shakes, but maybe the earth will move for you

Jayne


COMPETITION No 169
by Tessa Castro

Two little earthquakes shook Blackpool again recently. No damage was reported. But please write a poem of any kind called ‘Seaside Earthquake’. Maximum 16 lines.

Entries to ‘Competition No 169’ by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), email (comps@theoldie.co.uk) or fax (020 7436 8804) by 18th October 2013. Don’t forget to include your postal address.

[John Whitworth]

I think you need to be a little creative here. I've been a few days at this.

Seaside Earthquake

Through my telescope on Margate pier I spy you on the shingle.
All the blood within me seethes and surges round my body's ingle,
As my heart begins to hammer and my toes begin to tingle.

You're the treasure of the Inca in Pizarro's storm-tossed galleon,
You're the scarlet Maserati with its leather-clad Italian,
You're Brunnhilde's thrusting thighs about her fire-defying stallion.

I've consulted the philosophers from Abelard to Zeno,
And they say our love is much too much, but, hellfire, what do they know
As the spark from passion's tinder box unlocks my heart's volcano?

Let the lava of my yearning start to double and redouble
As the towers begin to topple and the pools begin to bubble
And the castles turn to sand and all the promenades to rubble.

There's a phosphorescent aura on the ooze that first began it,
There's a red sun setting slowly on a desolated planet,
There's a place for us together on the darkening shores of Thanet.

[Ann Drysdale]

John, you really will have to stop stalking Holly. Are you taking your medication?

[Brian Allgar]

Excellent stuff, John.

I'm thinking of sending the following (slightly modified) naughty piece that I originally wrote for Martin's LightenUp Online competition:

Seaside Earthquake

Full fathom five my car key lies.
In the back seat, I was going
Well with Coral; gasps and sighs,
Limbs entwined and juices flowing.

Pretty soon, the car was shaking
As we passionately played -
You’d have thought the earth was quaking! -
With my bone was Coral made.

Then her sister joined the humping
(Those are Pearl’s delicious thighs).
Our athletic grind-and-bumping
Freed the handbrake. Bad surprise!

The sloping beach, the car in motion -
Seawards it began to spin; it
Ended up beneath the ocean,
And, of course, the key’s still in it.


An alternative (and much nastier) last line:

Key (and both the girls) still in it.

[Peter Goulding]

Delicious Brian (and John too)
Brian, I much prefer your alternative ending but that's just me. Would maybe have a look at 'Bad surprise'?

[John Whitworth]

Ann, I have written gay love poems but this is not one of them. Holly is not Brunnhilde's thrusting thighs, really he is not. And I don't actually think he lives in Margate.

Margate swings, Ann. Tracy Emin says so.

[Ann Drysdale]

Like a pendulum do?

[Jayne Osborn]

Here you go, Annie: A blast from the past:
good ole Roger Miller with his "Eng-a-land swings, like a pendulum do..."

Jayne

[Jerome Betts]

And there, expecting does, I'd always assumed it must be 'pendulum doo', doo being some American term for the rounded part at the end.
You live and learn.

[Peter Goulding]

Well, if the rounded part at the end doesn't have a name, then henceforth it should be called a doo
OED, please note.