[Ann Drysdale]

Psst - Roger. This is not a worm. This is the wicked serpent tempting you to sin. Go on - take out all the odd-numbered linebreaks and see what happens...

Voilà! - couplets with internal rhymes.

I dare you.

[Roger Slater]

Great idea, Ann. I accept your dare. Though I'll still lose to several others on this page. I'm not complaining, though. I've given up winning for fear it might corrupt the mind-body balance I've achieved through years of self-denial. As an ascetic, losing is my one indulgence.

**

THE ASCETIC

There are no shoes upon my feet, no cushions on my stool.
For days on end I do not eat, and when I do, it's gruel.

I don't indulge in vice or sin, and yet I still atone.
The loin cloth itches that I'm in. My pillow is a stone.

I do not laugh, I do not speak, I do not leave my hut.
I urinate but once a week. My windows are all shut.

I try to live like Paul, the Saint, whose life was so austere.
I find I have but one complaint: I'm dying for a beer!

[Ann Drysdale]

There - that didn't hurt a bit, did it? Now - can I tempt you to a bite of this nice apple...?

Actually, this isn't a bad little fix-ette in certain circumstances. I've done it to a poem of mine to save a page in a collection and I'm willing to bet our genial host has, too. John?

[John Whitworth]

Do it all the time, Ann.

[R. S. Gwynn]

I had to cut a stanza out an old one, too. But that's asceticism, right?

When St. Simeon Stylites was besieged by girls in nighties
(In the harem they would wear’em on the 7/24),
He remained upon his pillar (such a haughty lady-killer!)
And their dances got no glances, for he thought them all a bore.

More ascetic than Siddhartha, he was hard on saintly Martha
(What a drama! His own mama!) whom he would not let draw near,
And he said with bitter laughter, “We shall meet in the hereafter.”
Well, she went away and died that day. He never shed a tear.

So he met her up in heaven after more than 37
Years of setting out and getting even closer to the bone:
“Son, you should have eaten better. I’ve been knitting you a sweater.”
But the hermit would not permit her to help him try it on!

[Lance Levens]

Does anyone have an address for the Staggers comp. yet?

[John Whitworth]

Duncan Gillies MacLaurin had one at the beginning of this thread.

Ah Sam - Bootiful, as the old turkey man used to say. But his turkeys were disgusting. Not so your verses.

[Max Goodman]

(I'm late to the party as usual. Y'all have, once again, set the bar high. I tried to do this with British references; couldn't swing it.)


The flesh is dross, ascetics know, ignoble, unrefined.
True self-denial's to forgo the pleasures of the mind.

I shun museums, lecture halls, and haunts of the elites,
And all I'll read are bathroom walls and Sarah Palin's tweets.

I spell things rong, and grammar ain't a thing I wouldn't flunk.
I do not act or sculpt or paint, and only sing when drunk.

In place of opera--taboo--I suffer jiggle shows,
And buy each monthly Playboy to refuse myself the prose.

And then there is the apogee of all delights I miss:
Instead of brilliant poetry, I sit here writing this.

[Roger Slater]

That's a winner, Max. I'm pretty sure the Brits know about Sarah Palin. She's much too amusing to be just a local story.

[George Simmers]

Good one, Max.