Miss Mealy-mouth

Jaspistos

In Competition No. 2421 you were given an opening couplet of a poem, ‘I knew a girl who was so pure/ She couldn’t say the word manure’ and invited to continue for a further 16 lines.

The couplet comes from ‘A Perfect Lady’, a poem by Reginald Arkell (who he?) in The Everyman Book of Light Verse. The lady ends happily cured:

She squashes greenfly with her thumb, And knows how little snowdrops come: In fact, the garden she has got Has broadened out her mind a lot.

This was the biggest entry ever. As usual in judging, when skill is equal I incline to the more original. The prizewinners, printed below, take £20 each, and Godfrey Bullard gets the extra fiver.

She spoke of ‘lady doggie’, which Had safer resonance than ‘bitch’, And failed to see, throughout her days, The cruder jokes in Shakespeare’s plays. From bare suggestion to such facts As nudity or carnal acts She’d turn, as from some lurid book, With crimson cheek and downcast look. She robed herself, by day or night, In garments of symbolic white, A wardrobe kept at great expense, While laundry bills became immense. The need to state her full address Would generate such sore distress That, though she lived in Maidenhead, ‘Near Slough’ was what she always said. Godfrey Bullard Profanity appalled her, so She never said ‘Hello’: just ‘—o’.

‘P’ was a problem, too: the letter Had connotations that upset her.

Out by the lake to take the air One day, she saw a sign: ‘Beware Of blasting near the dam!’ In shock She staggered, tripped against a rock, And fell into the water. Sadly (Since ‘Help!’ began and ended badly) She had to call out ‘Aid! Assistance!’ Which did not carry any distance, And when at last the girl was found She had, unfortunately, drowned.

Above her grave, if you pass by, You’ll read, ‘Here lies —–en –otts, R.I.–’ Michael Swan

... So found a substitute, to wit, A synonym that rhymed with it. According to the OED

It had a flawless pedigree, And valued for its simple rhyme Was used by Chaucer all the time.

Without a moment’s hesitation She’d use it in her conversation In Sainsbury’s or out at tea, Or in the vicar’s company, Thinking that in any forum It would serve with due decorum.

A dear friend, something of a prude, Explained it was extremely rude.

The girl looked hard at her, wide-eyed.

‘Well, I’ll be buggered,’ she replied.

Michael Saxby

... But mealy-mouthed at any cost, She called it ‘animal compost’.

With Pooh the dog in heat, she said That ‘Pooh was ready to be wed’.

One day while walking with a group On mountain paths in Guadaloupe (She didn’t know those distant lands) She asked where she could ‘wash her hands’.

The leader told her not to fret, There was no stream nearby as yet.

With teeth and muscles tightly clenched, She carried on till, blanched and drenched, At last despair gave her a push, And she made do behind a bush.

From that day on her plan was laid: She swore to call a spade a spade.

Livia Varju

... Nor speak of soil without her glands Erupting. Gardeners’ horny hands Embarrassed her. She made a scene, Imagining where they had been The sight of them, still thick with grime, Sent shivers through her every time, And made her cheeks as red as beet. The upshot was, she didn’t eat. How could she, when each tiny taste Reminded her of rotting waste? When any foodstuff made her blench, And sense a fertiliser’s stench? Pale as paper, gaunt and thin,

Her bones stood out beneath her skin. One fear secured her life, a wonder: The earth she might be buried under. Bill Greenwell I joshed her once: ‘Be euphemistic,

Call it waste’; she went ballistic,

Branded me a shameless cad, Insensitive and barking mad.

I countered, ‘Where on earth’s the harm?

Since you were brought up on a farm, How can you possibly demur?

To talk of slurry is no slur.’ Still she’d deny organic functions, Baulk at bodily conjunctions; Never flirty, always formal, Frosty, coy, demure — abnormal!

Would she snog? As likely that as Countenancing country matters.

I packed her in tout de suite, then kissed her

Warmer, wilder, willing sister.

Mike Morrison

No. 2424: Nostradamian

You are invited to write a prophetic poem naming in each line a startling event which will occur during each month next year, ending with a four-line glimpse of the more distant future. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2424’ by 22 December.