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Though others warned me ‘stay away’,
I’d hang out at a real hot spot,
Where even decent men may stray.
Good sense and judgment I’d not got.
In this degraded dive, alive
With demireps and half-wise guys
And jazz played by a slick jive five,
I met a girl with outsize thighs.
She asked me back to her flat that
Bragged spacious rooms but poor décor:
A sofa where a sad cat sat,
Drab wallpaper, a hardcore floor.
She cuffed my wrists to a spare chair,
and OMG — a cane domain!
I lay there in her lair, aware
I’d never feel quite sane again.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Observing the landscape I lie
And dream of that long-ago snow —
Of the sledge that I’m riding colliding,
Ignoring the shouts of ‘Go slow!’
And, as I’m descending, upending,
The watchers my guiding deriding,
And me in a heap below …No!
Why should I remember December
Of — what was the year? Disappear,
Such memories! Simply recall all
Those other occasions, when men
Were so slow to take spades up and clear here:
Ah, I had the strength of ten then!
But now — when I’m no longer stronger
Than all those old idlers, I sigh,
‘Let the snow fall apace and lie high.’
Mary Holtby
I’ve a luscious little toy boy,
Though a beautifully bad lad,
He’s a harbinger-of-joy boy
And a makes-his-daddy-glad lad.
He’s as slender as a slim jim,
And a seriously lewd dude.
I could hymn his every trim limb.
You should see him in the rude nude.
Yes I love him in the tight night,
And I love him in the gay day.
He’s my permanently bright light.
Have you anything to say, pray?
I composed this in a terse verse.
It’s a short song, not a long song.
You could write a lot of worse verse.
It’s the right song, not the wrong song.
John Whitworth
I picture Aunt Bea best undressed
Wrapped in a large brown dressing-gown,
Unpowdered face, hair everywhere.
‘God bless the child that brings me tea.’
Though built much like a quarry lorry,
She had a purring, Rolls-Royce voice
And eyes both soft and bright, alight
With fun: ‘What shall we play today?’
She meant it, too — tag, Cluedo, Ludo,
Cricket, hide-and-seek, bezique.
At family do’s we all recall
How she would, on one gin, begin
Her Hattie meets Dame Margot show:
A stately ‘Heffalump Galump’
And on to ‘Tinkerbell Gazelle’.
I’ve never known such laughter after…
W.J. Webster
Dauntless the ship came in to that great strait
where the sweet-voiced sirens plied their age-
long song.
But the cunning Ulysses, heroic, stoic,
knew all the wiles of the wine-dark sea. He
gave precise instruction to his crew, who
bound him with hawser to the main-mast fast,
and stopped their ears with softened beeswax
packs.
So, when was borne the ethereal sound around,
and they could not hear Ulysses cry, ‘Untie,
untie me, for I fain would stay,’ they
kept their course. And with laughter, after
he boasted the wonders he had heard, averred:
‘Of what we did not hear, we cannot know, so
it is not we, but you who will yet fret
and pine to hear that sensual strain again.
It’s your loss, Boss.’
Noel Petty
No. 2634: A self examined
You are invited to submit an obituary of a well-known figure, past or present, as they themselves might have written it (150 words maximum). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 10 February.
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