Spectator competition: Marking time

Competition 3349 invited you to write a poem riffing on the line ‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons’, from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, but substituting something else for the spoons.

You came up with rubbish collections, brands of jeans, obsolete technology, library fines, biros, toothpaste tubes, meds, lovers, visits to Wetherspoons, moons, macaroons. It was a large and brilliant entry, painful to whittle down when the marking time came. Those who for space reasons alone haven’t made the final cut were too numerous for any names to be picked out, while those who have win a pony (of the £25 variety).

I have measured out my life with feet –
distorted feet – the daily stock in trade
for me, obscure chiropodist from Lechlade;
ill-favoured feet, some racked by malformation
and every type of fungal infestation.
Hard-wired that nine-to-five was life’s intention
I sold my dreams for safety and a pension;
while braver men blazed journeys to the moon,
supped with the Devil with too short a spoon,
made and lost huge fortunes in a trice
on horses, cards, roulette and loaded dice,
played vast arenas with their four-chord bands,
lay with silk-skinned whores in far-off lands,
or held the fate of nations in their hands.
      Excitement is a risky choice to make.
      Not making it has been my worst mistake.

Martin Parker

I have measured out my life with stroppy goons,
Dim as basement flats if huger than baboons,
They’ve stood about me, surly if unyoked,
While I, their kingpin, ordered, threatened, joked.

At my pleasure, all these fellows were deployed
On my protection, an employment few enjoyed.
While they got their share of liquor, love and loot,
All imagined that they had a stronger suit.

Each one treasured brutish dreams of regicide
With Luger, bare fist, blade or cyanide.
Knowing the score, I’d watch them plot and yearn,
Setting next lunk upon last; they’d never learn.

I have measured out my life in stroppy goons,
Whose lives now seem brief, violent cartoons
And since you’ve asked what my deepest fear is,
It’s that you may be last in that long series.

Adrian Fry

I shall go then after all has been written
After all the decisions and revisions,
Will it be King Edwards, Maris Piper, Desiree?
Do I dare to buy some bleach?
Bad for the environment so they say,
And what of cakes and buns, modest treats?
No, I am not svelte, nor was meant to be
Though I have fasted (intermittently).
Is it time? Time to buy a tube of Veet
Perform some pubic topiary? But do I care?
Do I care? One thing I know, I will buy a dress,
I cannot resist rags made in far-off sweat shops
But I digress. Now I must think of pork chops
Of ham and salmon, jam and sourdough
I have measured out my life with shopping lists
I once made bucket lists but that was long ago.

Sue Pickard

Let us go then, you and I.
Let us to the wasteland, each a fly
Upon the walls of a thousand meetings –
Lasciate ogne esperanza, voi ch’entrate!

I have measured out my life with acronyms:
In DMTs and SMTs and JPGs,
Monthly appraisals, three-sixty degrees,
SMART KPIs, strategic working teams.

And April was the cruellest month, breeding –
Accountants! Budget planning, horizon scanning
Awaydays. Let us go then, you and I,
No AOB, DONM, but FYI –

The final exit interview. No, I am Sisyphus!
This is the way the world ends:
Not with a bang but an impact assessment.
Not with a bang but a WTF.

David Silverman

My first words (in translation) were: Look! Cat!
(next door’s, I think). Then, our own family pet –
Sîan (black and white) and rescued from the brat
who pulled her tail. Years passed. Life changed, reset
the mix. So, Lucy: black, our first. Alas,
run over. Ditto Florence (tabby). So
moving (not just for cats) there came to pass
Charlotte and Emily, two sisters, who
fell prey to lampers (may their spirits rot),
then Edith (Sitwell-faced and Siamese)
plus Ursula, fearless and brown and squat,
and since her time all cats have been Burmese.
Juno and Iris (sisters). When they died
we said: Enough. But life felt flat – and that’s
how, Dora, Bella came to be on side.
I’ve measured out my life in naming cats.

D.A. Prince

Another Wednesday, and it’s nearly noon.
Again I strain for poetry and profit;
the competition deadline’s coming soon
and I must titivate my latest effort.

It feels like ages since I came and went,
discussing aspects of Renaissance art.
It seems my hours now are mostly spent
keeping proverbial wolf and door apart.

So here I sit, a novelist manqué
trimming my vision into four quatrains
that will deliver what I want to say,
hoping to rope a pony for my pains.

Thus within each hebdomadary space
my life proceeds, piece by laborious piece,
each artefact snipped off and stuck in place
like the last-gasp collages of Matisse.

Ann Drysdale

No. 3352: About turn

You are invited to submit a passage about snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, or vice versa (150 words maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by midday on 29 May.