[Ann Drysdale]

And mine's half shut, but harking in the dark
for whingeings of the fretful porpentine.

[basil ransome-davies]

Did old Adam have a navel, as a god-created man?
He shouldn't, yet he always has in art.
Did the painters and the sculptors – an erotic-minded clan –
Decide it was a sexy little part?

I suspect behind their thinking lay an inkling of the truth,
That the omphalos is no mere cicatrix.
Like the presence in martinis of a smidgen of vermouth,
It's the telling detail that completes the mix.

There are innies, there are outies (though the latter, I am told,
Amount to hardly more than ten per cent);
There are those paraded proudly; there are some bedecked with gold;
There are many fragranced with a dab of scent.

In the realm of sexual fetishes it's chacun à son gout
From whips and chains to lingerie of gauze.
The libido has many paths of pleasure to pursue,
But I remain umbilically yours.

[Julie Steiner]

I don't know why navel-gazing gets such a bad rap in poetic circles. I quite liked this.

[John Whitworth]

Gerard Hoffnung said that if you ate celery in bed then the navel was a marvellous place to put the salt. Nice one, Bazza! Is there a picture anywhere of a navel-lessAdam? And presumably Eve didn't have one either. Nor, come to that, Pallas Athene who was born out of her father's head. Even Aphrodite...

[Don Jones]

In Praise of the Perineum

Most unassuming part of either sex
It rests between hot spots of joy and waste,
Depending on what nature’s drives suggest:
At times one end will mime the other’s haste.
A neither-place, Oh Taint! The Eye of Storms.
The Siegfried Line to firing jets and blasts,
Whose motions made mundane through social norms,
Or seized within the coccygeal’s grasp!
Turned this way that, which end can stake its claim?
Which function’s prized beside its functionless?
A strip between the Cities of the Plain,
Void casualty to either-ended mess?
Oh Sacral seal! Calm both who know we need them!
No one but you, the humble perineum.

[Chris Childers]

Ode to the Philtrum

Had I been on committee with the blessed spirits Elect,
.............Who hammered out Intelligent Design,
I would have leapt and kissed our otherworldly Architect
.............When he announced this plan for humankind:

To indicate their lips, they’ll need a pointing arrow.
It will be broad or narrow, and ridged like a wheelbarrow,
But Israelite and Pharaoh need an arrow they can trace.
.............Now the philtrum is the fulcrum of the face.

This fosse below the nose is where the runoff goes;
.............A heady potion brews as currents race.
Have you miscrunched a lil’ crumb, sloshed some champagne, or spilt rum?
.............Check the philtrum! It’s the fulcrum of the face.

Some like a slim waist best, a long leg or smooth breast;
.............I’m ensorcelled by a more bewitching place.
So if I kiss too high, now, Darling, you know why:
.............The philtrum is the fulcrum of the face.

[Roger Slater]

Chris, you need to cut it to 16 lines.

I'd meant to take on the philtrum myself, though it hadn't occurred to me to use it as a fulcrum. Give me a big enough lever and a big enough philtrum, I can move the universe!

[Roger Slater]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Gerard Hoffnung said that if you ate celery in bed then the navel was a marvellous place to put the salt.

I wasn't aware of the source. My parents always told me when I was little that the reason we had belly buttons was for eating radishes in bed, a claim that was far more amusing than this little throwaway rhyme I failed to throw away several years later:

MEDITATION

When I sit and contemplate
my navel, as is faddish,
the only thing I find is salt
in which I dip my radish.

Though I may not find inner peace
as lotus-like I scrunch,
my sense of inner hunger dies
as I consume my lunch.

*
I'll have to Google Gerard Hoffnung.

[basil ransome-davies]

John Major (ex-British PM) had a very pronounced philtrum. It really called out for a moustache. But he didn't grow one. My personal suspicion is that the Liverpool MP Edwina Currie, his extramarital squeeze, liked the feel of the un-hirsute philtrum.

[Ann Drysdale]

Robert Mugabe is surely the king of the philtrum moustache, is he not?