COMPETITION

Bouts limes

Jaspistos

12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY

In Competition No. 1648 . . . My voice falters. Ladies and gentlemen, readers, friends, enemies, thank God I am Pseudonymous, for I have a cock-up to confess that I wouldn't want to be associ- ated with my name. I entrusted a brown envelope containing this week's entry to my friend, Al Terego, and the bloody fool left it on a 19 bus, and nobody (hardly surprising) thought it worth passing on to Lost Property. So here I am, the director, no cast, no script, the curtain rising. Please favour my pathetic improvisation. First, I print George Meredith's amu- singly bad sonnet from which my rhyme- scheme for the bouts rimes was taken. I offered a tenner to anyone who detected the source, but my hunch is that nobody will have suffered loss, Second, I expose to the world a lunatic poem by Jaspistos, Which contains 59 anagrams of the word hospital. It was written to entertain a friend in Intensive Care, and nearly did for him.

A Certain People As Puritans they prominently wax, And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks. Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks, They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks. But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks When Peace another door in them unlocks, Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe. Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness, Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut. They need their pious exercises less Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair belief That these are devilish only to their thief, Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput.

Out of a Hot Lapis Lazuli Sky by Pia Hoist

`PILOT HAS CRASHED, HITS PALO ALTO.

SHIP TAIL HOPS MILE, DIGS STREETWIDE PIT.

SHOAL OF DEAD BODIES!' headline screamed.

I, Osip, survived. Condemned to phials Of Pathosil and to palish tea, Hot pails of it (pah, lots!), I take A loth sip — it's like opal shit, Pith also (if I may lisp oath).

I'm in Ward 1, St Olaph's Clinic, Potash, L. I. Being spoilt? Ah, no.

Dr Philotas lit a posh Cigar and growled, 'Your femur's split.

Oh, a bad case. You've lost a hip.'

I spot Hal, his assistant. `Pish, A lot you know, Plato!' (his first name).

'rho' a lip's gashed, I shall mend,' I said.

`Sh! Ailpot!' Doc barked. 'Hop it, Sal!'

(A pi sloth, a hot slip of a nurse, To Phil, as to his pal, a slave).

`Pat his 'ol back, slap it. Ho! Cough please.

Phlegm like Po silt, ha! ha! Op. list?

Ta. Polish the knife, soap hilt and spit.

Hola! We lop this.' A leg goes — mine.

His plot a fact at last, I hop, A lame, halt Osip; so Lapith did Hamstrung by Centaur's fierce lap-hoist.

I ask you, is PT a hol In hospital? Ah, pistol, end me!

r12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY

Lo, ashpit yawns! Hail, post-existence! A dark one? It may hap so, 'til God's halo tips my soil-path trudged. PS. A litho, `Th' Oil Spa' By Hals, I opt to leave to my holist Pa, T.A. Hislop. Ha, I'l stop.

Notes Ship: = plane, as often.

Pathosil: A drug to relieve suffering (pathos), unknown, alas, to modern medicine and me. Pith: The oath is of course 'piss'. St Olaph: Correctly spelt Olaf. But surely the name can be Olaph in some language? cf. Adolf and Adolph.

Potash: Concussed, Osip makes a mistake. The town of Potash is in fact in La (Louisiana). Ailpot: Valetudinarian. Cf. fusspot.

Op.: Operation.

Spit: For luck.

Hola!: The Greek doctor was doubtless trained at the Sorbonne.

PT: Therapeutic exercises for the disabled. Post-existence: In the dictionary. The hyphen, though, is a pity.

God's halo: The meaning is 'rewards my earth- journey completed'. Very Browningesque.

Th' Oil Spa: It is assumed that in 17th-century Holland natural oil springs were restored to for health purposes.

Holist: A follower of holism, the philosophy of General Smuts.

I'l stop: Shavian spelling.