[Clive]

Don't talk to me of paying rent.
The direct debit has not gone out and my salary has all been spent.

By those bastards at Girobank with their inaccurate statements, I was so sorely deceived.
Please help to save me from eviction - all contributions will be gratefully received.

[conny]

I think I am already there,
within that horrid place so bare
with iron bars and thesaurus:
Well Mr. Sullivan taught us
to tell a hare from a tortoise,
but the journals all ignore us-

We are our own sweet company,
the voices in my head, and me.

[Robert Swagman]

While surfing the net one's browser was sent
To an amusing metrical forum.
The poets, well versed, were substantially cursed
With a certain lack of decorum.

Poems of vows made to scared sheep and cows
During intense copulation,
Beating dead horses, abusing their corpses
And all forms of gross flagellation.

Gastronomical verse followed by terse
Bevies of hyphens - misplaced!
Descriptive facets of Gabrielle's assets
With a debate on heavenly grace.

One's mind was fraught with Freudian thoughts,
But epiphany bloomed from what's written here.
After all that I've roamed, this place feels like home...
I certainly hope I'll fit in here .

[Nigel Holt]

<u>Humping A Friesian</u>

Oh, there once was a Swagman who came across Eratosphere,
Under the steam of his Netscape Three,
And he laughed as he saw the verse of bovine sex appear,
Who'll come a-humping a Friesian with me?

Chorus

Who'll come a-humping a Friesian my darlings,
Who'll come a-humping a Friesian with me?
Humping a Friesian and pleading insanity,
Who'll come a-humping a Friesian with me?

Down came Bob Clawson to post some utter wickedness,
Up jumped our Swagman and promised him glee,
And he laughed and he smiled as he told him of his bovine quirks,
You'll come a-humping a Friesian with me.

Up came the owner, attacking all his clientelle,
Up came moderators – first one then two
Whose is that mottled cow dressed in the panty-hose,
We'll come a-humping a Friesian with you.

The Swagman all jealous, jumped in Alan’s Deep-End,
Killing himself by posting all Free,
And his ghost may be heard as it sings on Eratosphere,
Who'll come a-humping a Friesian with me?


Welcome Robert
(Man or Hobbit}

[Sharon]

Good Lord, I was so scandalized
I accidently went and posted twice.

Sharon, who regrets the verbal maulings
my slanted rhymes would garner from our Stallings




[This message has been edited by Sharon (edited January 31, 2002).]

[Sharon]

I can't express my most profound dismay
at reading what my mother does at play.
If I had dared indulge in some small banter
of this unseemly and pre-verted manner
I would have greeted all with my clean smile
provided by a mouthwash known as---Dial!
I wish I'd had a modicom of warning
when I logged on for poetry this morning:
the woman seated at the breakfast table
in secret, rhymes of smut inside the stable!

A moral's in here, somewhere, so I bet!
It's keep your children off the Internet.


Sharon

[Carol Taylor]

You've found me out! I never should have bought
your first computer, read you poems, taught
you everything I know about the sonnet,
or took you to a reading, introduced
you to my vices. Looking back upon it,
I see the little monster I've unloosed
to censor me can read and write and think.
If I had known that one day I'd be caught,
I prob'bly would have drowned you in the sink.

Love, Mom

[Roger Slater]

A Poem For Sharon's Mother

When I was young my mother read
us fairy tales and stories,
poems whose rhymes still fill my head,
Suess's allegories,

Lewis Carroll's Alice stuff,
the little train that could.
You'd think it would have been enough
and yet my mother would

read us poems not on the shelf,
"poems of smut," she called them,
dirty lines she wrote herself.
How fondly I recall them!

"Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall
beating the egg of his phallus."
Lewis Carroll didn't know all
the dirt contained in Alice.

[Robert Swagman]

To Nigel, in jest

Fang it from Banjo,
What a ripper idea!
Now don't get your knickers all knotted,
But someone must say it
He can't have a yack.
He's dead, boxed, buried and rotted.

Has one not the full quid?
Or maybe one's quist?
Having guzzled a slab of XXXX.
Perhap's one just pash
To wallop an Oz
Fresh to the station, I guess.

No illywhacker nor
Ocker bushwhacker
Not a sundowner showing up after the job,
Just a poor swagman,
Honest and blue,
Who makes a good fist for his bob.

So shout me a beer,
I'll quaff it right here,
Then give a loud hooroo and rack off.
But having a naughty
With sheep's not my thing,
So I'll just head home and ... after a long soothing bath, take a well deserved rest.

-30-

Isn't Strine a poetic language?

[This message has been edited by Robert Swagman (edited January 31, 2002).]

[Roger Slater]

What was the word that Bob Swagman omitted,
the one that seemed destined to rhyme with "rack off"?
It seemed that Bob Swagman had fully committed
to rhyming this phrase, so why did he back off?

Maybe he left us that big rhyming chasm
fearing the powers-that-be would eject him
were he to mention a self-made orgasm?
The powers, however, would mostly respect him.

That's what a censor can do to our freedom:
make us reluctant to ply our vocation.
Come, let's use "bad" words whenever we need ‘em.
You can't master verse without masturbation.




[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited January 31, 2002).]